Elliptic flow in a strongly interacting normal Bose gas

We study the anisotropic, elliptic expansion of a thermal atomic Bose gas released from an anisotropic trapping potential, for a wide range of interaction strengths across a Feshbach resonance. We show that this hydrodynamic phenomenon is for all interaction strengths fully described by a microscopi...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Man, Jay, Lopes, Raphael, Christodoulou, Panagiotis, Schmitt, Julian, Sohmen, Maximilian, Navon, Nir, Smith, Robert P., Hadzibabic, Zoran, Fletcher, Richard J
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116850
Description
Summary:We study the anisotropic, elliptic expansion of a thermal atomic Bose gas released from an anisotropic trapping potential, for a wide range of interaction strengths across a Feshbach resonance. We show that this hydrodynamic phenomenon is for all interaction strengths fully described by a microscopic kinetic model with no free parameters. The success of this description crucially relies on taking into account the reduced thermalizing power of elastic collisions in a strongly interacting gas, for which we derive an analytical theory. We also perform time-resolved measurements that directly reveal the dynamics of the energy transfer between the different expansion axes.