Quantum turbulence and correlations in Bose-Einstein condensate collisions

TL;DR

This paper numerically studies collisions of Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing quantum turbulence and correlations in scattering halos using the truncated Wigner method, with detailed analysis of its validity regime.

Contribution

It extends previous work by applying the truncated Wigner method to simulate condensate collisions and analyze quantum turbulence and correlations.

Findings

Quantum turbulence observed in scattering halos.

Correlation functions calculated from ensemble trajectories.

Validation of the truncated Wigner method for this regime.

Abstract

We investigate numerically simulated collisions between experimentally realistic Bose-Einstein condensate wavepackets, within a regime where highly populated scattering haloes are formed. The theoretical basis for this work is the truncated Wigner method, for which we present a detailed derivation, paying particular attention to its validity regime for colliding condensates. This paper is an extension of our previous Letter [A. A. Norrie, R. J. Ballagh, and C. W. Gardiner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 040401 (2005)] and we investigate both single-trajectory solutions, which reveal the presence of quantum turbulence in the scattering halo, and ensembles of trajectories, which we use to calculate quantum-mechanical correlation functions of the field.