Non-equilibrium Dynamics of a Trapped One-dimensional Bose Gas

Book excerpt: A study of breathing oscillations of a one-dimensional trapped interacting Bose gas is presented. Oscillations are initiated by an instantaneous change of the trapping frequency. In the thesis a 1D quantum Bose gas in a parabolic trap at zero temperature is considered, and it is explained, analytically and numerically, how the oscillation frequency depends on the number of particles, their repulsive interaction, and the trap parameters. We have focused on the many-body spectral description, using the sum rules approximation. The oscillation frequency is identified as the energy difference between the ground state and a particular excited state. The existence of three regimes is demonstrated, namely the Tonks regime, the Thomas-Fermi regime and the Gaussian regime. The transition from the Tonks to the Thomas-Fermi regime is described in the terms of the local density approximation (LDA). For the description of the transition from the Thomas-Fermi to the Gaussian regime the Hartree approximation is used. In both cases the parameters where the transitions happen are found. The extensive diffusion Monte Carlo simulations for a gas containing up to N = 25 particles is performed. As the number of particles increases, predictions from the simulations converge to the ones from the Hartree and LDA in the corresponding regimes. This makes the results for the breathing mode frequency applicable for arbitrary values of the particle number and interaction. The analysis is completed with the finite N perturbative results in the limiting cases. The theory predicts the reentrant behavior of the breathing mode frequency when moving from the Tonks to the Gaussian regime and fully explains the recent experiment of the Innsbruck group.