Static interfacial properties of Bose-Einstein condensate mixtures

Abstract

Interfacial profiles and interfacial tensions of phase-separated binary mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates are studied theoretically. The two condensates are characterized by their respective healing lengths $\xi_1$ and $\xi_2$ and by the inter-species repulsive interaction $K$. An exact solution to the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equations is obtained for the special case $\xi_2/\xi_1 = 1/2$ and $K = 3/2$. Furthermore, applying a double-parabola approximation (DPA) to the energy density featured in GP theory allows us to define a DPA model, which is much simpler to handle than GP theory but nevertheless still captures the main physics. In particular, a compact analytic expression for the interfacial tension is derived that is useful for all $\xi_1, \xi_2$ and $K$. An application to wetting phenomena is presented for condensates adsorbed at an optical wall. The wetting phase boundary obtained within the DPA model nearly coincides with the exact one in GP theory.