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Department of Physics

Anomalous condensate fluctuations

Sketch of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a triangular lattice. © Niklas Käming
A Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice forms an array of tubes with phase coherence across the system.
Anomalous condensate fluctuations observed

In an international collaboration with ICFO Barcelona, University of Hamburg, Kyoto University,  ETH Zurich,  University Poznań,  and DICP San Sebastian, we have studied the fluctuations of Bose-Einstein condensates across the thermal phase transition. The mean condensate fraction follows a well known power law as a function of temperature, but the fluctuations of the condensate fractions in individual realizations are much less studied. In our trapping geometry including an optical lattice, we find strong fluctuations that scale anomalously with the total particle number. The study contriutes to a better understanding of these fluctuations, which will be important for using Bose-Einstein condensates in quantum metrology applications such as atom interferometers. 

The preprint is available at Zahra Jalali-Mola et al. .