Driven collective instabilities in magneto-optical traps: a fluid-dynamical approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a fluid-dynamical theoretical model to analyze collective instabilities in magneto-optical traps, emphasizing the nonlinear coupling of modes and predicting stability conditions that align with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fluid-dynamical approach to describe collective instabilities in ultra-cold gases with long-range interactions, extending understanding of MOT dynamics.

Findings

The dynamics are governed by a generalized Mathieu equation.

The stability chart predicts conditions for instability onset.

Model results agree with experimental observations.

Abstract

We present a theoretical model to describe an instability mechanism in ultra-cold gases, where long-range interactions are taken into account. Focusing on the nonlinear coupling between the collective (plasma-like) and the center-of-mass modes, we show that the resulting dynamics is governed by a parametric equation of the generalized Mathieu type and compute the corresponding stability chart. We apply our model to typical ranges of magneto-optical traps (MOT) parameters and find a good agreement with previous experimental observations.