Trapping quantum impurities with atomic dark solitary waves

Project Level: Winter

Project Duration: 

4 weeks – (20-36 hours per week). Applicant will be required on-site for the project. Some remote contact via video conferencing may be used.

Description:

Atomic Bose-Einstein condensates are now routinely produced in laboratories around the world, including here at UQ. These peculiar states
of matter manifest close to absolute zero temperature, possessing almost no impurities or defects, and have been used in applications as frequency standards in atomic clocks as well as for simulating the physics of complex materials. Building on existing themes, we would theoretically model the interaction of a set of impurity atoms coupled to a particular type of excited state of the atomic system; the dark soliton. These curious excitations can be thought of as one-dimensional vortices, as they represent a depression on a background whose depth depends on their velocity. Using a combination of analytical and numerical techniques, we would obtain the solutions to the impurity-soliton system and explore their fundamental form and behaviour including their dynamics in experimentally motivated geometries.

Expected Outcomes:

Students would learn about the Gross-Pitaevskii formalism which is used to model atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, it’s analytical solutions as well as numerical approaches to obtaining the impurity-soliton solutions.

Suitable for:

Students who are comfortable manipulating partial differential equations, and have some previous experience with numerical analysis (e.g. Python). This project would best suit either a 3rd or 4th year student.

Further Information:

Interested students should send an email or arranage a time to discuss the details of the project and their suitability further to Dr Matthew Edmonds.