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Dynamical response of a Bose-Einstein condensate to a discontinuous change in internal state

M. R. Matthews, D. S. Hall, D. S. Jin, J. R. Ensher, C. E. Wieman, E. A. Cornell, F. Dalfovo, C. Minniti, S. Stringari

cond-matarXiv:cond-mat/9803310

Abstract

A two-photon transition is used to convert an arbitrary fraction of the 87Rb atoms in a |F=1,mf=-1> condensate to the |F=2,mf=1> state. Transferring the entire population imposes a discontinuous change on the condensate's mean-field repulsion, which leaves a residual ringing in the condensate width. A calculation based on Gross-Pitaevskii theory agrees well with the observed behavior, and from the comparison we obtain the ratio of the intraspecies scattering lengths for the two states, a|1,-1> / a|2,1> = 1.062(12).

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