Collapse of a Bose Condensate with Attractive Interactions.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 9 8 0 3 2 8 0 v 2 [ c o n d - m a t .s t a t - m e c h ] 2 5 M a r 1 9 9 8 Collapse of a Bose Condensate with Attractive Interactions Jose? A. Freire1 and Daniel P. Arovas2 1Centro Brasileiro de Pequisas F??sicas, Rua Dr. Xavier Sigaud 150, Rio de Janeiro-RJ, 22290-180 BRAZIL 2Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA (February 1, 2008) We examine the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) model for Bose-Einstein condensates in parabolic traps with attractive interactions. The decay of metastable condensates is investigated by applying the instanton formalism to the GP field theory. Employing various dynamical trial states, we derive within a coherent state path integral approach a collective coordinate description in terms of the condensate radius, in agreement with (and extending) earlier results. We then solve numerically for the complete instanton field configuration and compare with the collective coordinate approach. Adjusting only the effective mass of the collective coordinate, the two schemes are then in good agreement. PACS numbers: I. INTRODUCTION It is well known that a Bose gas with purely attrac- tive interactions is unstable and will collapse to a state with no thermodynamic limit. However, in the pres- ence of a harmonic confining potential, Ruprecht et al. [1] have shown that a metastable condensate exists, pro- vided the particle number N is sufficiently small. The condition for a metastable condensate is N Nc, with Nc ∝ ?/|a|, where ? is the quantum confinement length associated with the trap, and a is the s-wave scattering length; a 0 corresponds to an attractive s-wave pseu- dopotential. Such is the situation with 7Li, for which a = ?(14.5±0.4) aB, where aB is the Bohr radius [2]. In- deed, experiments by Bradley et al. [4] demonstrated the existence of metastable 7Li condensates of limited par- ticle number (N Nc). Experiment and theory are in rough agreement on the value of Nc