ABSTRACT

Calculating Arrival Times at the Center of a Bose-Einstein Condensate

The ability to make and study Bose-Einstein condensates allows physicists to study quantum systems on a larger scale than usually possible. Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in a shell shape by a “bubble trap” are being created in experiments on the International Space Station. When released from the trap, particles will move towards the center, causing interference patterns when they arrive. In this work, we work to predict the time between releasing the particles from the trap and the start of interference. We develop an alternative method that does not involve computationally-intensive numerical time evolution of the full system. We use previous theoretical predictions for the initial velocity upon release of the inner edge of the system, along with a numerical solution for the initial BEC state to solve for our predicted time value. We have used our method to predict times for states whose time-evolution is already known and have made predictions for other systems closer to those being currently used in the experiments on the International Space Station.