P. C. Haljan

Watching Dark Solitons Decay into Vortex Rings in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

We have created spatial dark solitons in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in which the soliton exists in one of the condensate components and the soliton nodal plane is filled with the second component. The filled solitons are stable for hundreds of milliseconds. The filling can be selectively removed, making the soliton more susceptible to dynamical instabilities. For a condensate in a spherically symmetric potential, these instabilities cause the dark soliton to decay into stable vortex rings. We have imaged the resulting vortex rings.

Driving Bose-Einstein-Condensate Vorticity with a Rotating Normal Cloud

We have developed an evaporative cooling technique that accelerates the rotation of an ultracold 87Rb gas, confined in a static harmonic potential. As a normal gas is evaporatively spun up and cooled below quantum degeneracy, it is found to nucleate vorticity in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Measurements of the condensates aspect ratio and surface-wave excitations are consistent with effective rigid-body rotation. Rotation rates of up to 94% of the centrifugal limit are inferred. A threshold in the normal clouds rotation is observed for the intrinsic nucleation of the first vortex. The threshold value lies below the prediction for a nucleation mechanism involving the excitation of surface waves of the condensate.

Watching a Superfluid Untwist Itself: Recurrence of Rabi Oscillations in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

The order parameter of a condensate with two internal states can continuously distort in such a way as to remove twists that have been imposed along its length. We observe this effect experimentally in the collapse and recurrence of Rabi oscillations in a magnetically trapped, two-component Bose-Einstein condensate of

Vortex Precession in Bose-Einstein Condensates: Observations with Filled and Empty Cores

{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}

Implementation of Grover's quantum search algorithm in a scalable system

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Nonequilibrium Effects of Anisotropic Compression Applied to Vortex Lattices in Bose-Einstein Condensates

We have observed and characterized the dynamics of singly quantized vortices in dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates. Our condensates are produced in a superposition of two internal states of 87Rb, with one state supporting a vortex and the other filling the vortex core. Subsequently, the state filling the core can be partially or completely removed, reducing the radius of the core by as much as a factor of 13, all the way down to its bare value of the healing length. The corresponding superfluid rotation rates, evaluated at the core radius, vary by a factor of 150, but the precession frequency of the vortex core about the condensate axis changes by only a factor of 2.

Observation of Long-Lived Vortex Aggregates in Rapidly Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates

We report the implementation of Grovers quantum search algorithm in the scalable system of trapped atomic ion quantum bits. Any one of four possible states of a two-qubit memory is marked, and following a single query of the search space, the marked element is successfully recovered with an average probability of 60(2)%. This exceeds the performance of any possible classical search algorithm, which can only succeed with a maximum average probability of 50%.

Phase control of trapped ion quantum gates

We have studied the dynamics of large vortex lattices in a dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensate. While undisturbed lattices have a regular hexagonal structure, large-amplitude quadrupolar shape oscillations of the condensate are shown to induce a wealth of nonequilibrium lattice dynamics. When exciting an m=-2 mode, we observe shifting of lattice planes, changes of lattice structure, and sheetlike structures in which individual vortices appear to have merged. Excitation of an m=+2 mode dissolves the regular lattice, leading to randomly arranged but still strictly parallel vortex lines.

Experimental studies of equilibrium vortex properties in a Bose condensed gas

We study the formation of large vortex aggregates in a rapidly rotating dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensate. When we remove atoms from the rotating condensate with a tightly focused, resonant laser, the density can be locally suppressed, while fast circulation of a ring-shaped superflow around the area of suppressed density is maintained. Thus a giant vortex core comprising 7 to 60 phase singularities is formed. The giant core is only metastable, and it will refill with distinguishable single vortices after many rotation cycles. The surprisingly long lifetime of the core can be attributed to the influence of strong Coriolis forces in the condensate. In addition we have been able to follow the precession of off-center giant vortices for more than 20 cycles.

Zero-point cooling and low heating of trapped {sup 111}Cd{sup +} ions

There are several known schemes for entangling trapped ion quantum bits for large-scale quantum computation. Most are based on an interaction between the ions and external optical fields, coupling internal qubit states of trapped ions to their Coulomb-coupled motion. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of these motional gate schemes to phase fluctuations introduced through noisy external control fields, and suggest techniques for suppressing the resulting phase decoherence.