Suppression of Transport of an Interacting Elongated Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Random Potential

David Clément (1) , Andrès Varòn (1) , Mathilde Hugbart (1) , Jocelyn A. Retter (1) , Philippe Bouyer (1) , Laurent Sanchez-Palencia (1) , Dimitri M. Gangardt (2) , Georgy V. Shlyapnikov (2, 3) , Alain Aspect (1)

1 laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique atomique
2 LPTMS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques
3 Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute

We observe the suppression of the 1D transport of an interacting elongated Bose-Einstein condensate in a random potential with a standard deviation small compared to the typical energy per atom, dominated by the interaction energy. Numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation reproduce well our observations. We propose a scenario for disorder-induced trapping of the condensate in agreement with our observations.

Mots clés: disorder; speckle; localization; diffusion; transport; Bose-Einstein condensation; ultracold atoms

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

David Clément, Andrès Varòn, Mathilde Hugbart, Jocelyn A. Retter, Philippe Bouyer, et al.. Suppression of Transport of an Interacting Elongated Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Random Potential. Physical Review Letters, 2005, 95, pp.170409. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.170409⟩. ⟨hal-00005568v2⟩