Non-exponential one-body loss in a Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate and thermal cloud, revealing non-exponential decay in the condensate due to atom transfer to the thermal cloud, which differs from the thermal cloud's exponential decay.

Contribution

It demonstrates that condensate decay is non-exponential and driven by atom transfer to the thermal cloud, a behavior applicable to all BECs in thermal equilibrium with a thermal fraction.

Findings

Condensate decays faster and non-exponentially compared to the thermal cloud.

Thermal cloud exhibits exponential decay with a 4/3 times longer time constant.

Atom transfer from condensate to thermal cloud causes the non-exponential decay.

Abstract

We have studied the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable helium atoms in an optical dipole trap. In the regime where two- and three-body losses can be neglected we show that the Bose-Einstein condensate and the thermal cloud show fundamentally different decay characteristics. The total number of atoms decays exponentially with time constant tau; however, the thermal cloud decays exponentially with time constant (4/3)tau and the condensate decays much faster, and non-exponentially. We show that this behaviour, which should be present for all BECs in thermal equilibrium with a considerable thermal fraction, is due to a transfer of atoms from the condensate to the thermal cloud during its decay.