Abstract

We report on a proposal to reduce the group velocity of a small "laser" Bose-Einstein condensate upon passing through a larger "medium" condensate of the same isotopic species in analogy to slowing of light passing through dispersive media. We make use of ultracold collisions near a magnetic Feshbach resonance, which gives rise to a sharp variation in scattering length with collision energy and thereby changes the group velocity. A generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation is used to derive an expression for the group velocity in a homogeneous medium as well as for the spatial delay delta, through a finite-sized medium BEC with a Thomas-Fermi density distribution. We predict a maximum reduction of the group velocity by a half, which physically corresponds to freely propagating Feshbach molecules. For typical narrow Feshbach resonances and a medium with number density 10(15) cm(-3), up to 85% of the lower bound can be achieved, making the effect experimentally observable. We also derive constraints on the experimental realization of our proposal.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2013
Volume
87
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevA.87.053608
Journal
Physical Review A
Contributors