Ground-State Properties of Magnetically Trapped Bose-Condensed Rubidium Gas

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the ground-state properties of a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium-87 atoms, highlighting the effects of interactions and estimating key superfluid parameters.

Contribution

It offers a quantitative understanding of the condensate's structure, interactions, and superfluid characteristics using simple scaling arguments.

Findings

Kinetic energy is a small perturbation at large particle numbers.

The spatial and momentum distribution depend critically on particle interactions.

Estimated superfluid coherence length and critical angular velocity for vortex formation.

Abstract

We give a quantitative account of the ground-state properties of the dilute magnetically trapped $^{87}$Rb gas recently cooled and Bose-Einstein condensed at nanokelvin-scale temperatures. Using simple scaling arguments, we show that at large particle number the kinetic energy is a small perturbation, and find a spatial structure of the cloud of atoms and its momentum distribution dependent in an essential way on particle interactions. We also estimate the superfluid coherence length and the critical angular velocity at which vortex lines become energetically favorable.