Julio Gea-Banacloche 2006 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 39 69 doi:10.1088/0953-4075/39/1/008
Julio Gea-Banacloche1
Show affiliationsA formalism is introduced to describe a number of physical processes that may break down the coherence of a matter wave over a characteristic length scale l. In a second-quantized description, an appropriate master equation for a set of bosonic 'modes' (such as atoms in a lattice, in a tight-binding approximation) is derived. Two kinds of 'localizing processes' are discussed in some detail and shown to lead to master equations of this general form: spontaneous emission, and modulation by external random potentials. Some of the dynamical consequences of these processes are considered: in particular, it is shown that they generically lead to a damping of the motion of the matter-wave currents, and may also cause a 'flattening' of the density distribution of a trapped condensate at rest.
03.75.Gg Entanglement and decoherence in Bose-Einstein condensates
03.75.Kk Dynamic properties of condensates; collective and hydrodynamic excitations, superfluid flow
Issue 1 (14 January 2006)
Received 9 August 2005, in final form 9 September 2005
Published 5 December 2005
Julio Gea-Banacloche 2006 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 39 69
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