Abstract
We study, by means of a variational method, the stability of a condensate in a magnetically trapped atomic Bose gas with a negative scattering length and find that the condensate is unstable in general. However, for temperatures sufficiently close to the critical temperature the condensate turns out to be metastable. For that case we determine in the usual WKB approximation the decay rate of the condensate due to macroscopic quantum fluctuations. When appropriate, we also calculate the decay rate due to thermal fluctuations. An important feature of our approach is that (nonsingular) phase fluctuations of the condensate are taken into account exactly.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M. H. Anderson, J. R. Ensher, M. R. Matthews, C. E. Wieman, and E. A. Cornell,Science 269:198 (1995).
C. C. Bradley, C. A. Sackett, J. J. Tollett, and R. G. Hulet,Phys. Rev. Lett. 75:1687 (1995).
K. B. Davis, M.-O. Mewes, M. R. Andrews, N. J. van Druten, D. S. Durfee, D. M. Kurn, and W. Ketterle,Phys. Rev. Lett. 75:43969 (1995).
J. M. Doyle, J. C. Sandberg, I. A. Yu, C. L. Cesar, D. Kleppner, and T. J. Greytak,Phys. Rev. Lett. 67:603 (1991).
O. J. Luiten, H. G. C. Werij, I. D. Ssetija, T. W. Hijmans, and J. T. M. Walraven,Phys. Rev. Lett. 70:544 (1993); I. D. Setija, H. G. C. Werij, O. J. Luiten, M. W. Reynolds, T. W. Hijmans, and J. T. M. Walraven,Phys. Rev. Lett. 70:2257 (1993).
E. R. I. Abraham, W. I. McAlexander, C. A. Sackett, and R. G. Hulet,Phys. Rev. Lett. 74:1315 (1995).
H. T. C. Stool,Phys. Rev. A 49:3824 (1994).
R. G. Hulet, Private communication.
P. A. Ruprecht, M. J. Holland, K. Burnett, and M. Edwards,Phys. Rev. A 51:4704 (1995).
Yu. Kagan, G. V. Shlyapnikov, and J. T. M. Walraven,Phys. Rev. Lett. 76:2670 (1996).
E. V. Shuryak,Phys. Rev. A 54:3151 (1996).
I. H. Duru, H. Kleinert, and N. Ünal,J. Low. Temp. Phys. 42:137 (1981).
Yu. A. Nepomnyashchiį and A. A. NepomnyashchiįZh. Eksp. Toer. Fiz. 751:976 (1978). [Sov. Phys. JETP 48:493 (1978)].
G. Baym and C. J. Pethick,Phys. Rev. Lett. 76:6 (1996).
A. L. Fetter,Phhs. Rev. A 53:4245 (1996).
S. Coleman,Phys. Rev. D 15:2929 (1977).
V. V. Goldman, I. F. Silvera, and A. J. Leggett,Phys. Rev. B 24:2870 (1981).
F. Dalfovo and S. Stringari,Phys. Rev. A 53:2477 (1996).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stoof, H.T.C. Macroscopic quantum tunneling of a bose condensate. J Stat Phys 87, 1353–1366 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02181289
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02181289