Stabilizing a purely dipolar quantum gas against collapse

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of the dipolar collapse of a quantum gas which sets in when we reduce the contact interaction below some critical value using a Feshbach resonance. Due to the anisotropy of the dipole-dipole interaction, the stability of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate depends not only on the strength of the contact interaction, but also on the trapping geometry. We investigate the stability diagram and find good agreement with a universal stability threshold arising from a simple theoretical model. Using a pancake-shaped trap with the dipoles oriented along the short axis of the trap, we are able to tune the scattering length to zero, stabilizing a purely dipolar quantum gas.

5 pages, 1 table, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Bose-Einstein condensation of chromium
• Vortices and Superfluidity in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
• Strong dipolar effects in a quantum ferrofluid
• Observation of dipole-dipole interaction in a degenerate quantum gas
• Interaction-driven Dynamics of 40K / 87Rb Fermi-Bose Gas Mixtures in the Large Particle Number Limit

Cited by in corpus (5)

• d-wave collapse and explosion of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate
• Rotating soliton solutions in nonlocal nonlinear media
• Structure and melting behavior of classical bilayer crystals of dipoles
• Dynamics and stability of Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive 1/r interaction
• Heteronuclear quantum gas mixtures