Collapse times for attractive Bose-Einstein condensates

ESTEBAN CALZETTA

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS

IOP

Lugar: Bristol; Año: 2008 vol. 41 p. 25302 - 25302

0953-4075

We argue that the main mechanism for condensate collapse in an attractive Bose?Einstein condensate is the loss of coherence between atoms a finite distance apart, rather than the growth of the occupation number in non-condensate modes. Since the former mechanism is faster than the latter by a factor of approximately 3/2, this helps to dispel the apparent failure of field theoretical models in predicting the collapse time of the condensate./2, this helps to dispel the apparent failure of field theoretical models in predicting the collapse time of the condensate.