Analysing spatiotemporal instabilities in magneto-optical traps with the tools of turbulence theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates spatiotemporal instabilities in magneto-optical traps of rubidium atoms using turbulence theory tools, revealing turbulent-like dynamics and distinguishing different instability regimes.

Contribution

It introduces turbulence theory methods to analyze and characterize instabilities in magneto-optical traps, providing new insights into their dynamics.

Findings

Identification of turbulence-like scaling in atom cloud dynamics

Distinction between different instability regimes

Quantitative analysis of spatiotemporal fluctuations

Abstract

A large cloud of $^{87}$Rb atoms confined in a magneto-optical trap exhibits, in a certain regime of parameters, spatio-temporal instabilities with a dynamics resembling that of a turbulent fluid. We apply the methods of turbulence theory based on structure function analysis to extract scaling exponents which are compared to known turbulent regimes. This analysis also allows us to make a clear distinction between different instability regimes.