Enhanced backscattering of a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate
Abstract
We study experimentally and numerically the quasi-bidimensional transport of a 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate launched with a velocity v0 inside a disordered optical potential created by a speckle pattern. A time-of-flight analysis reveals a pronounced enhanced density peak in the backscattering direction -v0, a feature reminiscent of coherent backscattering. Detailed numerical simulations indicate however that other effects also contribute to this enhancement, including a "backscattering echo" due to the position-momentum correlations of the initial wave packet.
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