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Macroscopic Quantum Tunnelling of a Metastable Bose-Einstein Condensate

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Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a metastable Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) tunnelling from a cubic-plus-quadratic well to open space. By applying the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the WKB method, we compute the tunnelling rate of the BEC out of the quasi-bound well and obtain explicit expressions in terms of s-wave scattering length and chemical potential. We find that the increase of the repulsive interaction and chemical potential lead to an enhancement of the decay rate of condensate. Our analytical results fit very well with the recent experimental observation for the relation between tunnelling rate and chemical potential of a quasi-bound condensate.

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Presenters

  • Rui-Bin Liu

    The University of Hong Kong

Authors

  • Rui-Bin Liu

    The University of Hong Kong

  • Shizhong Zhang

    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University