Transition state theory for wave packet dynamics. II. Thermal decay of Bose-Einstein condensates with long-range interaction

Abstract

We apply transition state theory to coupled Gaussian wave packets and calculate thermal decay rates of Bose-Einstein condensates with additional long-range interaction. The ground state of such a condensate is metastable if the contact interaction is attractive and a sufficient thermal excitation may lead to its collapse. The use of transition state theory is made possible by describing the condensate within a variational framework and locally mapping the variational parameters to classical phase space as has been demonstrated in the preceding paper [A. Junginger, J. Main, and G. Wunner, submitted to J. Phys. A]. We apply this procedure to Gaussian wave packets and present results for condensates with monopolar 1/r-interaction comparing decay rates obtained by using different numbers of coupled Gaussian trial wave functions as well as different normal form orders.