Collapse and revival of the monopole mode of a degenerate Bose gas in an isotropic harmonic trap

Abstract

We study the monopole (breathing) mode of a finite temperature Bose-Einstein condensate in an isotropic harmonic trap recently developed by Lobser et al. [Nat.~Phys., \textbf{11}, 1009 (2015)]. We observe a nonexponential collapse of the amplitude of the condensate oscillation followed by a partial revival. This behavior is identified as being due to beating between two eigenmodes of the system, corresponding to in-phase and out-of-phase oscillations of the condensed and noncondensed fractions of the gas. We perform finite temperature simulations of the system dynamics using the Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin methodology [J.~Low Temp.~Phys., \textbf{116}, 277 (1999)], and find good agreement with the data, thus confirming the two mode description.