Growth of a Bose-Einstein condensate: a detailed comparison of theory and experiment

Author

M J Davis 1,2 and C W Gardiner 3

Affiliations

1 Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK
2 Department of Physics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
3 School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

E-mail

m.davis2@physics.ox.ac.uk

Journal

Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Create an alert RSS this journal

Issue

Volume 35, Number 3

Citation

M J Davis and C W Gardiner 2002 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 35 733

doi: 10.1088/0953-4075/35/3/322


 
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Abstract

We extend the earlier model of condensate growth of Davis et al (Davis M J, Gardiner C W and Ballagh R J 2000 Phys. Rev. A 62 063608) to include the effect of gravity in a magnetic trap. We carry out calculations to model the experiment reported by Köhl et al (Köhl M, Davis M J, Gardiner C W, Hänsch T and Esslinger T 2001 Preprint cond-mat/0106642) who study the formation of a rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate for a range of evaporative cooling parameters. We find that, in the regime where our model is valid, the theoretical curves agree with all the experimental data with no fitting parameters. However, for the slowest cooling of the gas the theoretical curve deviates significantly from the experimental curves. It is possible that this discrepancy may be related to the formation of a quasicondensate.

 
PACS

37.10.De Atom cooling methods

Subjects

Atomic and molecular physics

Dates

Issue 3 (14 February 2002)

Received 3 December 2001

Published 31 January 2002



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