Instability of a Bose-Einstein Condensate with Attractive Interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interactions, identifying a critical particle number for collapse and analyzing the effects of gain-loss mechanisms on condensate dynamics.

Contribution

The study numerically determines the critical particle number for collapse in an attractive BEC and explores the impact of gain-loss processes on its stability and oscillatory behavior.

Findings

Critical particle number N_c ≈ 1251 for collapse without gain or loss.

Inclusion of gain-loss mechanisms leads to oscillations in particle number.

Maximum particle number in oscillations N_c ≈ 1260.

Abstract

We study the stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate of harmonically trapped atoms with negative scattering length, specifically lithium 7. Our method is to solve the time-dependent nonlinear Schrodinger equation numerically. For an isolated condensate, with no gain or loss, we find that the system is stable (apart from quantum tunneling) if the particle number N is less than a critical number N_c. For N > N_c, the system collapses to high-density clumps in a region near the center of the trap. The time for the onset of collapse is on the order of 1 trap period. Within numerical uncertainty, the results are consistent with the formation of a "black hole" of infinite density fluctuations, as predicted by Ueda and Huang. We obtain numerically N_c approximately 1251. We then include gain-loss mechanisms, i.e., the gain of atoms from a surrounding "thermal cloud", and the loss due to two- and three-body collisions. The number N now oscillates in a steady state, with a period of about 145 trap periods. We obtain N_c approximately 1260 as the maximum value in the oscillations.