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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Scaling laws governing the collapse of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Sebastian J. Morris, Christopher J. Ho, Simon M. Fischer, Jiří Etrych, Gevorg Martirosyan, Zoran Hadzibabic, and Christoph Eigen*

  • *Contact author: ce330@cam.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. A 111, L041301 – Published 7 April, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.111.L041301

Abstract

We study the collapse of an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate, where an unstable system evolves towards a singularity, by numerically solving the underlying cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation. We find good agreement between our simulations and the atom-loss measurements with a K39 condensate. Our simulations reveal an interplay of weak collapse and the propensity of the system to form a hotspot and we uncover scaling laws that govern this behavior. We also identify promising signatures of the theoretically predicted, but so far experimentally elusive, elastic three-body interactions.

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Phys. Rev. A 111, L041301– Published 7 April, 2025
  • Received 18 December 2024
  • Accepted 13 March 2025
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