Speed of sound in disordered Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder affects the speed of sound in Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing a negative correction universally and detailed features in one dimension, supported by analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

It provides a perturbative calculation of phonon lifetime and sound speed correction in disordered BECs, including detailed analysis for optical speckle potentials and one-dimensional cases.

Findings

Negative correction to sound speed in all dimensions

Universal asymptotics for smooth disorder correlations

Identification of a 'boson dip' and 'boson peak' in density of states in 1D

Abstract

Disorder modifies the sound-wave excitation spectrum of Bose-Einstein condensates. We consider the classical hydrodynamic limit, where the disorder correlation length is much longer than the condensate healing length. By perturbation theory, we compute the phonon lifetime and correction to the speed of sound. This correction is found to be negative in all dimensions, with universal asymptotics for smooth correlations. Considering in detail optical speckle potentials, we find a quite rich intermediate structure. This has consequences for the average density of states, particularly in one dimension, where we find a "boson dip" next to a sharp "boson peak" as function of frequency. In one dimension, our prediction is verified in detail by a numerical integration of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.