Shortcut to adiabaticity for an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

¹ Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Institut Non Linéaire de Nice, CNRS - 1361 route des Lucioles, F-06560 Valbonne, France, EU
² Universidad de Buenos Aires, FCEN, Departamento de Fisica and Instituto de Fisica de Buenos Aires, CONICET - Ciudad Universitaria, Pab. I C1428EGA Buenos Aires, Argentina

^a guillaume.labeyrie@inln.cnrs.fr

Received: 10 December 2010
Accepted: 7 January 2011

Abstract

We present an investigation of the fast decompression of a three-dimensional (3D) Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) at finite temperature using an engineered trajectory for the harmonic trapping potential. Taking advantage of the scaling invariance properties of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we exhibit a solution yielding a final state identical to that obtained through a perfectly adiabatic transformation, in a much shorter time. Experimentally, we perform a large trap decompression and displacement within a time comparable to the final radial trapping period. By simultaneously monitoring the BEC and the non-condensed fraction, we demonstrate that our specific trap trajectory is valid both for a quantum interacting many-body system and a classical ensemble of non-interacting particles.