U. Al Khawaja

Skyrmions in a ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate

Multi-component Bose–Einstein condensates provide opportunities to explore experimentally the wealth of physics associated with the spin degrees of freedom. The ground-state properties and line-like vortex excitations of these quantum systems have been studied theoretically. In principle, nontrivial spin textures consisting of point-like topological excitations, or skyrmions, could exist in a multi-component Bose–Einstein condensate, owing to the superfluid nature of the gas. Although skyrmion excitations are already known in the context of nuclear physics and the quantum-Hall effect, creating these excitations in an atomic condensate would offer an opportunity to study their physical behaviour in much greater detail, while also enabling an ab initio comparison between theory and experiment. Here we investigate theoretically the stability of skyrmions in a fictitious spin-1/2 condensate of 87Rb atoms. We find that skyrmions can exist in such a gas only as a metastable state, but with a lifetime comparable to (or even longer than) the typical lifetime of the condensate itself.

Low-dimensional Bose gases

We present an improved many-body T-matrix theory for partially Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gases by treating the phase fluctuations exactly. The resulting mean-field theory is valid in arbitrary dimensions and able to describe the low-temperature crossover between three-, two-, and one-dimensional Bose gases. When applied to a degenerate two-dimensional atomic hydrogen gas, we obtain a reduction of the three-body recombination rate, which compares favorably with experiment. Supplementing the mean-field theory with a renormalization-group approach to treat the critical fluctuations, we also incorporate into the theory the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition that occurs in a homogeneous Bose gas in two dimensions. In particular, we calculate the critical conditions for the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition as a function of the microscopic parameters of the theory. The proposed theory is further applied to a trapped one-dimensional Bose gas, where we find good agreement with exact numerical results obtained by solving a nonlinear Langevin field equation.

Phase fluctuations in atomic Bose gases

We improve on the Popov theory for partially Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gases by treating the phase fluctuations exactly. As a result, the theory becomes valid in arbitrary dimensions and is able to describe the low-temperature crossover between three-, two-, and one-dimensional Bose gases, which is currently being explored experimentally. We consider both homogeneous and trapped Bose gases.

A comparative analysis of Painlevé, Lax pair, and similarity transformation methods in obtaining the integrability conditions of nonlinear Schrödinger equations

We derive the integrability conditions of nonautonomous nonlinear Schrodinger equations using the Lax pair and similarity transformation methods. We present a comparative analysis of these integrability conditions with those of the Painleve method. We show that while the Painleve integrability conditions restrict the dispersion, nonlinearity, and dissipation/gain coefficients to be space independent and the external potential to be only a quadratic function of position, the Lax Pair and the similarity transformation methods allow for space-dependent coefficients and an external potential that is not restricted to the quadratic form. The integrability conditions of the Painleve method are retrieved as a special case of our general integrability conditions. We also derive the integrability conditions of nonautonomous nonlinear Schrodinger equations for two- and three-spacial dimensions.

Surface of a Bose-Einstein condensed atomic cloud

We investigate the structure and collective modes of a planar surface of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensed gas at zero temperature. In the long-wavelength limit we find a mode similar to the gravity wave on the surface of a fluid with the frequency

Soliton localization in Bose–Einstein condensates with time-dependent harmonic potential and scattering length

\ensuremath{\omega}

Formation of matter-wave soliton molecules

and the wave number q related by

Skyrmion physics in Bose-Einstein ferromagnets

{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{2}=Fq/m.

The effect of temperature and pinning density on the critical current of a superconductor with a square periodic array of pinning sites

Here F is the force due to the confining potential at the surface and m is the particle mass. At shorter wavelengths we use a variational approach and find corrections to

Nonlinear coupling between scissors modes of a Bose-Einstein condensate

{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{2}