Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

This thesis presents experiments performed to investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of ultracold bosons. In depth understanding of the behaviour of quantum systems when taken out of equilibrium is of particular interest, especially for the production of quantum computers where thermal effects cause undesirable behaviours. We present our experiments on the thermalization of a87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate taken out of equilibrium by a partial Bragg pulse. We measure the rate of thermalization of the system and measure the temperature of the thermalized state, and compare to numerical simulations. We observe the formation of grey solitons in the thermalized state consistent with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. We also present experiments on artificial gauge potentials with Bose-Einstein condensates. We benchmark the experiments with a uniform synthetic potential and extend to spin-orbit coupled systems. We take the spin-orbit coupled BEC out of equilibrium through the application of a synthetic electric field and measure the thermalization process of the system. We measure the rate at which the system reaches equilibrium as a function of the final Raman coupling strength, and measure the temperature of the thermalized states. We observe the system thermalize into a spin-orbit coupled state with a the final temperature decreasing with increasing Raman coupling.