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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) provide us with an ideal tool to study superfluidity, phase transitions and other rich phenomena in quantum degenerate systems, as their interactions are highly tunable and they are well-described by tractable theoretical models. Recently, there has been a great effort towards producing BECs of atoms and molecules that possess large magnetic or electric dipole moments, and thus have long-range, anisotropic interaction character. Such interactions lead to the emergence of a roton-maxon feature in the quasiparticle spectrum of the trapped dipolar BEC, much like that found in liquid Helium-4. In this talk, I will discuss the fundamental role that the roton plays in the physics of dipolar Bose gases, attributing a variety of phenomena to its presence. The manifestations of the roton can be seen, for example, in structured ground and vortex states, superfluid dynamics, and the phase separation of binary mixtures of dipolar bosons.
Host: Chris Ticknor, T-1