Variational study of polarons in Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We use a class of variational wave functions to study the properties of an impurity in a Bose-Einstein condensate, i.e. the "Bose polaron". The impurity interacts with the condensate through a contact interaction, which can be tuned by a Feshbach resonance. We find a stable attractive polaron branch that evolves continuously across the resonance to a tight-binding diatomic molecule deep in the positive scattering length side. A repulsive polaron branch with finite lifetime is also observed and it becomes unstable as the interaction strength increases. The effective mass of the attractive polaron also changes smoothly across the resonance connecting the two well-understood limits deep on both sides.