Analysing spatiotemporal instabilities in magneto-optical traps with the tools of turbulence theory

Abstract

A large cloud of $^{87}$Rb atoms confined in a magneto-optical trap exhibits, in a certain regime of parameters, spatio-temporal instabilities with a dynamics resembling that of a turbulent fluid. We apply the methods of turbulence theory based on structure function analysis to extract scaling exponents which are compared to known turbulent regimes. This analysis also allows us to make a clear distinction between different instability regimes.