Observation of Brownian Motion of a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of classical Brownian motion in momentum space by a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms prepared in a hexagonal optical lattice. Upon suddenly increasing the effective atomic mass, the BEC as a whole behaves as a classical rigid body with its center of mass receiving random momentum kicks by a Langevin force arising from atom loss and interactions with the surrounding thermal cloud. Physically, this amounts to selective heating of the BEC center-of-mass degree of freedom by a sudden quench, while with regard to the relative coordinates, the BEC is stabilized by repulsive atomic interactions, and its internal dynamics is suppressed by forced evaporative cooling induced by atom loss. A phenomenological theory is developed that well explains the experimental data quantitatively.