Free expansion of lowest-Landau-level states of trapped atoms: A wave-function microscope

Journal Article · Mon Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 2003 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.68.035601· OSTI ID:20640263

Read, N ^[1]; Cooper, N R ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208120, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8120, USA (United States)
2. Theory of Condensed Matter Group, Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, (United Kingdom)

We show that for any lowest-Landau-level state of a trapped, rotating, interacting Bose gas, the particle distribution in coordinate space in a free expansion (time of flight) experiment is related to that in the trap at the time it is turned off by a simple rescaling and rotation. When the lowest-Landau-level approximation is valid, interactions can be neglected during the expansion, even when they play an essential role in the ground state when the trap is present. The correlations in the density in a single snapshot can be used to obtain information about the fluid, such as whether a transition to a quantum Hall state has occurred.

• OSTI ID: 20640263
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 68; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOMS
BASIC INTERACTIONS
BOSE-EINSTEIN GAS
BOSONS
COORDINATES
CORRELATIONS
DENSITY
DISTRIBUTION
EXPANSION
GROUND STATES
INFORMATION
MICROSCOPES
RADIATION PRESSURE
ROTATION
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD
TRAPPING
TRAPS
WAVE FUNCTIONS