Controlled Collapse of a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/articles/hh63sw458

Abstract

The point of instability of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) due to attractive interactions was studied. Stable ⁸⁵Rb BECs were created and then caused to collapse by slowly changing the atom-atom interaction from repulsive to attractive using a Feshbach resonance. At a critical value, an abrupt transition was observed in which atoms were ejected from the condensate. By measuring the onset of this transition as a function of number and attractive interaction strength, we determined the stability condition to be N|a|/ahₒ=0.459±0.012±0.054, slightly lower than the predicted value of 0.574.

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