Anomalous enhancement of quasiparticle current near a potential barrier in a Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper explores how Bogoliubov phonons in a Bose-Einstein condensate exhibit anomalous quasiparticle current enhancement near a potential barrier, affecting tunneling and inducing a supercurrent that conserves total current.

Contribution

It reveals the anomalous enhancement of quasiparticle current and the phase twisting of the condensate wavefunction, leading to a finite Josephson supercurrent in a BEC.

Findings

Quasiparticle current is anomalously enhanced near the barrier.

The phase of the condensate wavefunction twists, inducing a supercurrent.

The supercurrent flows opposite to the quasiparticle current, conserving total current.

Abstract

We investigate tunneling properties of Bogoliubov phonons in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We find the anomalous enhancement of the quasiparticle current $J_{\rm q}$ carried by Bogoliubov phonons near a potential barrier, due to the supply of the excess current from the condensate. This effect leads to the increase of quasiparticle transmission probability in the low energy region found by Kovrizhin {\it et al.}. We also show that the quasiparticle current twists the phase of the condensate wavefunction across the barrier, leading to a finite Josephson supercurrent $J_{\rm s}$ through the barrier. This induced supercurrent flows in the opposite direction to the quasiparticle current so as to cancel out the enhancement of $J_{\rm q}$ and conserve the total current $J=J_{\rm q}+J_{\rm s}$.