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# Observation of deviations from ideal gas thermodynamics in a trapped Bose-Einstein condensed gas

## I Introduction

Trapped, dilute atomic gases offer a new opportunity to study the interplay between quantum-statistical phenomena and interactions in Bose systems nature\_review . A third ingredient, the external trapping potential, also plays a key role in understanding the properties of these gases Dalfovo et al. (1999). At finite temperatures, it leads to spatially distinct condensed and thermal phases, a new behavior when compared to bulk quantum fluids, in which both components overlap everywhere. This spatial separation allows in particular a clear identification of the condensed fraction through absorption imaging, in stark contrast with superfluid 4He, where condensed fraction measurements are only indirect Sokol (1993).

Much work has been devoted to the properties of condensed gases at very low temperatures (much smaller than the critical temperature $`T_\mathrm{c}`$), where the non-condensed fraction is negligible. Then, in the so-called Thomas-Fermi (TF) regime Dalfovo et al. (1999), the static and dynamic behavior of the condensate is essentially determined by the interplay between the trapping potential and the atomic interactions. At higher temperatures, less than but comparable to $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, a significant thermal component is also present, typically much more dilute than the condensate. In this situation, the kinetic energy per thermal atom is larger than the mean-field energy, and deviations from ideal gas behavior are small Ensher et al. (1996); Mewes et al. (1996); Maragò et al. (2001); Han et al. (1998); Anderson and Kasevich (1999); Schreck et al. (2001). Although several key thermodynamical properties, such as condensed fraction and average energy, are readily measurable experimentally, a detailed comparison of experiments with finite-temperature theories of the interacting cloud is to our knowledge still lacking.

The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill this gap, by investigating experimentally the thermodynamics of a trapped 87Rb Bose gas below $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, where both a condensed and a thermal component are present. We focus on two quantities, the condensed fraction and the expansion (kinetic plus mean-field) energy in the radial direction. We find that the condensed fraction $`N_0/N`$ is significantly reduced with respect to the ideal-gas law, $`N_0/N=1(T/T_\mathrm{c}^0)^3`$, where $`T_\mathrm{c}^0`$ is the ideal gas condensation temperature in the thermodynamic limit, and that the expansion energy is increased, even for the thermal atoms.

Our measurements thus clearly exclude ideal-gas behavior, and to assess the importance of interactions, we compare them with two mean-field theories of the interacting cloud that assume a condensate in the TF regime. The simplest one is the so-called “semi-ideal” model Minguzzi et al. (1997); Naraschewski and Stamper-Kurn (1998), which considers the thermal cloud as a quantum-saturated gas evolving in the combined trapping plus condensate-mean-field potential. Although the general trend of our observations is well reproduced by this model, finer details are not. To take interactions within the thermal cloud and between the thermal cloud and the condensate into account, we use a self-consistent Hartree-Fock (HF) description of the mixed cloud Goldman et al. (1981); Huse and Siggia (1982); Oliva (1989); Bagnato et al. (1988); Shi and Zheng (1997a, b); Giorgini et al. (1997a), which yields good agreement with the data. We are able to confirm experimentally its validity over a wide range of temperatures and atom numbers, and to show that despite the diluteness of the thermal cloud, its mean-field energy affects both the condensed and non-condensed atoms. Such systematic measurements of the mutual interplay between the condensed and non-condensed components have not been reported before, although evidence for repulsion of the thermal atoms by the condensate has been provided in busch2000a , through a careful study of the interface region btween the two components.

Our measurements rely on the standard time-of flight technique to observe the mixed cloud. A limitation arises at low temperatures, where the condensate appears broader than the thermal cloud in time of flight. This limits our measurements with this technique to $`T/T_\mathrm{c}^0>0.3`$ (condensed fraction $`<80`$ %). To overcome this limitation, we use coherent Bragg scattering to spatially separate the coherent and incoherent components of the cloud in time of flight. We apply it for low temperature thermometry, and measure in this way condensed fraction larger than 90 % and temperatures below 100 nK ($`T/T_\mathrm{c}^00.2`$).

The paper is organized as follows. Section II first describes the experimental apparatus used for condensate production. Then we expose the widely used procedure of time-of-flight imaging, and introduce the improved method based on Bragg diffraction to filter the condensate out of thermal cloud. The key results of this paper are presented in sections III and IV. In section III, we present a measurement of the temperature dependance of the condensed fraction. In section IV, the Bragg filtering scheme is applied to a measurement of the expansion energy of the thermal component. Both measurements clearly confirm the HF predictions in the whole temperature range. Further evidence for mutual interaction is provided in section V, where we analyze the behavior of the mixed cloud in time of flight and measure a compression of the condensate axial length by the thermal cloud. For completeness, we review briefly in appendix A the three well-understood models to which we compare the data, namely the ideal gas model, the semi-ideal model and the self-consistent HF model.

## II Experimental methods

This section reviews the experimental techniques used in this work. After a brief description of our experimental apparatus (II.1), we discuss in section II.2 condensed fraction and temperature measurements via time-of-flight absorption imaging, and point out to the limitations of this technique for high condensed fractions. In section II.3, we show how they can be overcome using coherent Bragg scattering Kozuma et al. (1999); Stenger et al. (1999).

### II.1 Condensate production

Our experimental setup employs the standard combination of laser and evaporative cooling to reach Bose-Einstein condensation in a sample of 87Rb atoms, spin-polarized in the $`|F=1;m_\mathrm{F}=1`$ hyperfine ground state. A Zeeman-slowed atomic beam loads a magneto-optical trap in 4 seconds. After spatial compression (125 ms) and cooling in optical molasses (6 ms), the laser cooled sample is repumped in the $`F=1`$ hyperfine manifold and loaded into an Ioffe-Pritchard type magnetic trap. The trap, an iron-core electro-magnet, is a specific feature of our experiment Desruelle et al. (1998). The guiding of magnetic flux lines along the ferromagnetic body of the magnet produces strong (when compared to macroscopic, coil-based devices) radial gradients (1.4 kG/cm), while using a modest current of 30 Amps. This produces a cigar-shaped, very-elongated harmonic potential of the form $`V_{\mathrm{ext}}=M\omega _{}^2(x^2+y^2)/2+M\omega _z^2z^2/2`$. In this work, differently from Richard et al. (2003), radial and axial trapping frequencies are respectively $`\omega _{}/2\pi =413(5)`$ Hz and $`\omega _z/2\pi =8.69(2)`$ Hz at a 10 G bias field.

The combined compression and evaporation sequence typically lasts for 16 seconds, with the last part of the radio-frequency (rf) evaporation ramp considerably slowed down (to a ramp speed of $`200`$ kHz/s) and followed by a $`1`$ s hold time in the presence of an rf shield. This is done in order to allow the system to cross slowly the quantum degeneracy threshold, and to relax towards equilibrium. In particular, non-equilibrium shape oscillations that occur in such anisotropic traps upon condensation Richard et al. (2003); Shvarchuck et al. (2002) are strongly reduced. To ensure the reproducibility of the temperature in the experiment, the radio-frequency $`\nu _0`$ that empties the trap is measured every five experimental cycles, and the rf shield frequency $`\nu _{\mathrm{rf}}`$ is readjusted in real time to follow slow drifts of the bottom of the trap. In this way, the “trap depth” $`\nu _{\mathrm{rf}}\nu _0`$ is controlled within $`\pm 2`$ kHz. Since we measure $`h(\nu _{\mathrm{rf}}\nu _0)/k_\mathrm{B}T`$ 11 in this final evaporation stage, we estimate the temperature reproducibility to be $`\pm 10`$ nK.

### II.2 Time of flight imaging

Informations on the atomic cloud are obtained through time-of-flight absorption imaging (see Ketterle et al. (1999) for a detailed account of imaging techniques, and imaging  for details of the implementation in our experiment). This widely employed method will be referred to as the “standard method” in the following. Here, two important quantities are measured through a fit to absorption images, the condensed fraction and the temperature. To find the condensed fraction, we use the fitting method described in Ketterle et al. (1999), which assumes that the atomic density can be described by a parabolic TF profile describing the condensate plus an ideal Bose-Einstein distribution with zero chemical potential describing the thermal cloud. The condensed number $`N_0`$ is taken to be the number of atoms integrated under the parabolic profile, while the total atom number $`N`$ is found by integration over the entire profile.

The temperature is measured through an independent fit to a thermal Bose-Einstein distribution, restricted to the wings of the thermal distribution only, in order to minimize the effect of interactions (see Ensher et al. (1996); Mewes et al. (1996) and section IV). One typically assumes that the high-energy atoms selected by this procedure behave as if the gas were ideal, and extracts effective temperatures $`T_x`$ and $`T_z`$ from the cloud sizes, for instance $`k_\mathrm{B}T_x=M\omega _{}^2R_{\mathrm{th}}^2/[1+(\omega _{}t)^2]`$ with $`R_{\mathrm{th}}`$ the radial size. We observe a systematic variation of the temperature $`T_z`$ measured along the long axis with the size of the exclusion region. This effect was more pronounced with increasing condensed fraction, and disappeared above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$. On the contrary, the radial temperature $`T_x`$ was barely affected by the actual size of the exclusion region, provided it was chosen larger than the condensate radius and sufficiently small to conserve a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio (5% or less variation). For this reason, we infer the initial temperature from the radial value $`T_x`$ only notetemp . This thermometry procedure assumes a nearly-ballistic expansion. Collisional effects in time-of-flight may invalidate this assumption, and it is important to estimate their importance to quantify the accuracy of our measurements. We defer this discussion to sections IV and V.

### II.3 Selective displacement of the condensate using coherent Bragg scattering

The method described in the last subsection rests on the clean distinction between the condensed and thermal components. However, for cold samples ($`k_\mathrm{B}T\mu `$), the condensate radius after time of flight is larger than the extension of the thermal cloud. The details of the thermal distribution are therefore “buried” under the condensate density profile, and a reliable fit is not possible. We have found no difficulties for $`N_0/N60`$% ($`T/T_\mathrm{c}^00.5`$), while still being able to extract valuable informations for condensed fractions close to 80 % ($`T0.3T_{C0}`$). For higher condensed fractions, the signal-to-noise on the wings is too low to perform a reliable fit.

In this section, we describe an improvement of the time-of-flight technique that exploits the dramatic difference between the two components in momentum space Dalfovo et al. (1999); Kozuma et al. (1999); Stenger et al. (1999). Our primary motivation for introducing this method is to improve the resolution at low temperatures, a key advantage in the condensed fraction measurements presented below. The principle of the technique is to transfer the whole condensate to a center-of-mass momentum state with two photon recoil velocities (approximately $`1.1`$ cm/s in our case), while leaving the thermal atoms essentially unaffected. As shown in Fig. 1, after a subsequent time of flight (typically 20 ms), the condensate has moved away from the center of the thermal cloud, allowing us to perform separate fits and revealing previously hidden information about the thermal component. This technique is related to the filtering scheme used in Ferlaino et al. (2002) to study collective modes in the presence of a weak optical lattice at finite temperatures.

Momentum transfer is achieved by exposing the sample to two counter-propagating laser beams detuned with respect to each other. The moving lattice formed this way can Bragg diffract the atoms, promoting them to a two-recoil momentum state. In principle, Bragg scattering is sensitive to the atomic momentum distribution Kozuma et al. (1999); Stenger et al. (1999). However, if the spectral width of the Bragg pulse, Fourier-limited by the pulse duration $`T`$ to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{F}1/T`$, is much larger than the condensate Doppler width $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _02v_\mathrm{R}/L`$, the momentum sensitivity of Bragg diffraction is lost and almost complete transfer of the condensate ($`\pi `$ pulse) is achieved. On the other hand, if the thermal component spectral width, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{\mathrm{th}}2v_\mathrm{R}/\lambda _\mathrm{T}`$ ($`\lambda _\mathrm{T}=\sqrt{2\pi \mathrm{}^2/mk_\mathrm{B}T}`$ is the thermal De Broglie wavelength), is much larger than $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{F}`$, Bragg diffraction is then a momentum-selective process, and most of the thermal atoms, being off-resonant with the Bragg beams, stay at rest in the laboratory frame. This filtering technique thus makes possible independent manipulation of the condensed and non-condensed atoms.

The experimental setup that we use to generate the Bragg beams is identical to the one used in Richard et al. (2003). The $`\pi `$ Bragg pulse is applied after sudden switch-off of the trapping potential and a 2 ms time of flight, to avoid s-wave collisions between atoms with different momenta chikkatur2000a . The Bragg beams are counter-propagating and parallel to the elongated axis of the trap. Since the condensate mean-field energy is then almost entirely released in the transverse directions, perpendicular to the diffraction axis, the ratio between the condensate and thermal cloud spectral widths is

$$\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _0}{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{\mathrm{th}}}\right)_{\mathrm{t}.\mathrm{o}.\mathrm{f}.}\left(\frac{\omega _z}{\omega _{}}\right)^2\sqrt{\frac{\mu }{k_\mathrm{B}T}},$$
(1)
and remains smaller than one even at very low temperatures. Note that this would not have been the case for Bragg beams parallel to a radial axis, where the momentum width is larger by a factor $`(\omega _{}/\omega _z)^2`$ due to the the released mean field energy.

To find the condensate fraction, we simply count the number of diffracted atoms and identify it with the condensed number. To obtain a meaningful measurement of the condensed fraction, two conditions have to be met. First, almost all condensate atoms should be diffracted. Transfer efficiencies as high as 97 % were observed for the coldest clouds we have produced, indicating that only a few percent of the condensate population remains at rest; this is comparable to the $`\pm 2`$ % root-mean-square fluctuations of the diffraction efficiency that we have measured experimentally. Second, the diffracted number of thermal atoms should be small to obtain a sensible measurement of the condensed number. We estimate the diffracted fraction of thermal atoms $`f_{\mathrm{th}}`$ in the impulse approximation discussed in Zambelli et al. (2000). In this approximation, well justified for the low densities considered here, the number of atoms diffracted from the thermal cloud is taken to be proportional to the thermal part of the momentum distribution, integrated over the directions perpendicular to the axis of the Bragg beams. Treating the thermal cloud as an ideal Bose gas in a first approximation, we find for a resonant $`\pi `$ pulse

$$f_{\mathrm{th}}=\frac{\pi ^2}{4\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{\mathrm{th}}T}\frac{\left[g_{5/2}(1)g_{5/2}\left\{\mathrm{exp}\left[16(\nu _\mathrm{R}/\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{\mathrm{th}})^2\right]\right\}\right]}{g_{3/2}(1)}.$$
(2)
Here and below, the Bose functions are defined by $`g_\alpha (u)=_{j1}u^j/j^\alpha `$. The second term in brackets arises from off-resonant excitations, which are negligible for the condensate but sizeable for the thermal component. The quantity $`f_{\mathrm{th}}`$ varies from 6 % at 400 nK ($`T0.8T_\mathrm{c}^0`$, or $`N_0/N20`$ %) to 20 % at 150 nK ($`T0.2T_\mathrm{c}^0`$, or $`N_0/N90`$ %). The number of thermal atoms in the diffracted peak is given by $`(1N_0/N)f_{\mathrm{th}}`$. All in all, we estimate from this simplified calculation that the Bragg filter is a useful technique in a window $`5\%<N_0/N<95\%`$, the upper bound being set by the first condition (complete condensate transfer) and the lower by the second (number of condensed atoms larger than number of thermal atoms in the diffracted peak). Outside of this window, it becomes suspect to identify unambiguously the diffracted order with the condensate. Despite of this, the technique represents a significant improvement over the standard method, as we will see in the next sections.

## III Condensed fraction of the interacting gas versus temperature

With the tools of section II in hand, we can investigate the behavior of the condensed fraction as a function of temperature. This quantity is of primary importance: the possibility to measure it directly in trapped gases is in stark contrast with the situation in traditional, bulk superfluids where such measurements are intrisically difficult Sokol (1993). We have done this measurement in two steps, first by using the standard method and second by taking advantage of the enhanced resolution of the Bragg filtering scheme.

### III.1 Standard time-of flight measurements

Using the standard analysis technique (i.e. no Bragg filtering), we investigate in this section a temperature interval ranging from $`T1.1T_\mathrm{c}^0`$ down to $`T0.3T_\mathrm{c}^0`$, with approximately $`2\times 10^6`$ atoms at the transition. Fig. 2 shows the measured condensed fraction as a function of $`T/T_\mathrm{c}^0`$. Each point results from an averaging over several (typically five) realizations under identical conditions. The expectation for an ideal gas, including finite-size effects Dalfovo et al. (1999), lies distinctly above our experimental data. The difference can be attributed to interactions, as shown by the far better agreement with the self-consistent HF calculation (solid line). The observed reduction of the condensed fraction contrasts with the homogeneous case Giorgini et al. (1996), where the condensed and normal component overlap everywhere, and where it is energetically favorable to increase the condensed fraction to diminish the exchange interaction energy among excited states.

An interesting property, first pointed out in Giorgini et al. (1997b), is the scaling behavior of all thermodynamical quantities, which depend only on the reduced temperature $`T/T_\mathrm{c}^0`$ and on the parameter $`\eta `$ which controls the magnitude of two-body repulsion semicl ,

$$\eta =\frac{\mu _{\mathrm{TF}}[N_0=N]}{k_\mathrm{B}T_\mathrm{c}^0}1.57\left(\frac{a}{\overline{\sigma }}\right)^{2/5}N^{1/15}.$$
(3)
Alternatively, one can express $`\eta `$ as the ratio between the two characteristic lengths in the uniform problem, the scattering length $`a`$ and the De Broglie wavelength $`\lambda _0`$ for $`T=T_\mathrm{c}^0`$, as $`\eta 1.07(a/\lambda _0)^{2/5}`$. The power $`2/5`$ reflects the presence of the trapping potential. A typical value in our experiment is $`\eta =0.5`$, while the experiment of Ensher et al. (1996) (for instance) corresponds to $`\eta 0.30.4`$. Thus, the effect of two-body interactions is stronger in the work reported here, which explains to some extent the clarity with which we observe deviations from ideal gas behavior.

In the experiment, because the total number $`N`$ drops with $`T`$ due to evaporation and losses, $`\eta `$ slightly decreases across the temperature range, from $`0.51`$ above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ to $`0.47`$ at low temperature (see Fig. 2c and d). To compare with theory, we use the average number of atoms across the data set, $`\overline{N}1.2\times 10^6`$, and the corresponding $`\overline{\eta }=0.49`$. This does not lead to a discernible variation of the HF prediction at the scale of the graph, because of the very weak $`N^{1/15}`$ dependence of $`\eta `$. This behavior emphasizes the scaling behavior exhibited by trapped Bose gases with large atom numbers Giorgini et al. (1997b).

Finally, we note that the data in the vicinity of $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, shown in Fig. 2e, emphasize the necessity of the full HF treatment of the thermal component to understand quantitatively the thermodynamic properties. As a matter of fact, the semi-ideal model (dashed line) predicts a condensed fraction systematically higher than the one we observe. This is clear evidence for mutual interaction between the condensed and non-condensed components. We will return later to this point, which is an important conclusion to be drawn from this work.

### III.2 Enhanced resolution of low thermal fraction

As discussed earlier, at low temperatures, $`T0.4T_C`$, the standard procedure is unable to extract faithfully the properties of the thermal cloud. Thanks to the Bragg filtering technique introduced in section II.3, this difficulty can be overcome and very small thermal fraction can be detected. The condensed fraction measured this way is plotted in Fig. 2b, along with the $`\overline{\eta }=0.47`$ curve that corresponds the value $`\overline{N}8\times 10^5`$ for this set of measurements. Again, we find good agreement with the prediction of the HF model within our uncertainty, even at very low temperatures. One could wonder whether the contribution from collective excitations (quantum and low-energy thermal depletion) could be measured by this technique (the analogous of the phonon regime in superfluid 4He). Unfortunately, according to the estimations of Giorgini et al. (1997a), they are always small when compared to the contribution of single-particle excitations in the temperature range we explore, and compared to the estimated sensitivity of the Bragg technique (section II.3). Only by increasing the diluteness parameter $`\sqrt{n_0(\mathrm{𝟎})a^3}`$ significantly could this regime become observable experimentally with the techniques described here.

## IV Measurement of the overall and thermal expansion energies

Another quantity that can be measured from time-of-flight expansion is the release energy Ensher et al. (1996); Mewes et al. (1996); Dalfovo et al. (1999), the sum of the kinetic and interaction energy released at the trap cut-off and available for the expansion of the whole cloud. In an anisotropic trap such as ours ($`\omega _{}/\omega _z51`$), almost all the interaction energy converts into radial expansion velocity. The radial expansion of the cloud for $`t\omega _{}^1`$, observed in the $`y`$ direction, proceeds at an overall speed $`v_y`$, fixed by the expansion energy

$`E_y={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}Mv_y^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}E_{\mathrm{kin}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}E_{\mathrm{int}},`$ (4)
which, if scaled by the characteristic $`Nk_\mathrm{B}T_\mathrm{c}^0`$, is a universal function of $`\eta `$ and $`T/T_\mathrm{c}^0`$. We discuss in Appendix A how to calculate the kinetic and interaction energies in the HF approximation.

Experimentally, one measures $`E_y`$ directly from the root mean square cloud radius, according to $`y^2=v_yt`$ Ensher et al. (1996); Mewes et al. (1996), without resorting to a detailed fitting model. This expression assumes negligible relaxation between the axial and radial degrees of freedom. We have plotted the measured value of $`E_y`$ in Fig. 3a. for same data as those shown in Fig. 2b, where the Bragg filter has been used ($`\eta 0.47`$ for these data). As expected, the kinetic energy of the thermal cloud dominates close to $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, with a small contribution of the mean-field energy, whereas the interaction energy of the condensate $`E_0`$ is the most important term at low temperature. The HF curve connects these two limiting cases, and reproduces well our observations.

A key advantage in our situation is the ability to analyze separately the condensate and the thermal cloud thanks to the Bragg filtering scheme, and therefore to measure the release energy of the thermal cloud alone. To avoid the condensate, we estimate the thermal cloud rms radius from a fit to a radial cut to the image (see inset in Fig. 3b). The release energy of the thermal cloud measured this way is shown in Fig. 3b, together with the calculated value,

$`E_y^{(\mathrm{th})}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}E_{\mathrm{kin}}+{\displaystyle \frac{k_\mathrm{B}T}{2}}(\zeta _0+\zeta _{\mathrm{th}}).`$ (5)
The quantities $`\zeta _0`$, $`\zeta _{\mathrm{th}}`$ represent the scaled mean-field energy corresponding to the repulsion felt by a thermally excited atom due the condensate and to the remaining thermal atoms, respectively. They are defined more precisely in Appendix A. Although the difference with the non-interacting curve is less pronounced at very low temperatures, where the thermal energy is very low, close to $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, these results emphasize the important role of interactions and the good agreement with HF theory once again.

## V Further evidence for mutual interaction between the condensed and thermal components

From images taken employing the Bragg filtering scheme, it is also possible to examine a radial cut to the profile of the thermal cloud, as shown in Fig. 4a. As the initial kinetic energy of the thermal cloud is typically much larger than its mean-field energy, one expects that the density distribution after time of flight reflects at least approximately the initial momentum distribution, which does not display the “hole” present in the density distribution in the trap (see Appendix A for further discussion). This is indeed the case: the measured profiles show a monotonic behavior near the center of the cloud visibhole . Nevertheless, the density distribution we observe is somewhat flatter in the central region than the ideal gas distribution used in the analysis, as shown by the residuals of a fit to the radial profile (Fig. 4b). Above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, the effect disappears, which indicates that a flatter profile is not simply an artifact of our measurement method. Furthermore, such a behavior is to be expected if the condensate mean field repels the thermal cloud in the early stage of the expansion, since interactions tend in general to make the density profile more uniform.

### V.1 Evidence for non-ballistic expansion

As stated in section II, this repulsion effect is not taken into account in our fitting procedure, which assumes an ideal Bose-distribution to fit the profile and ballistic expansion to deduce temperature from the cloud sizes. To investigate further the validity of the analysis, we begin by plotting in Fig. 5a and 5b the aspect ratio of both components, as a function of the reduced temperature. One sees from these graphs that the simple model of a TF condensate on top of an ideal thermal background is not sufficient to account for the data. Indeed, for our trapping frequencies and for the time of flight $`t=22.3`$ ms used in these measurements, one would expect from this model an aspect ratio of 1.17 for the condensate and $`0.77`$ for the thermal cloud. Both deviate from these values and vary with temperature, indicating that the expansion dynamics is more complex than assumed by the analysis model. Note that although this model fails to describe fully the expansion dynamics, the observed deviation from ballistic expansion remains small.

As already pointed out, the obvious weakness of the analysis model is the neglect of collisional effects. We recall that the expansion model is basically motivated by the absence of a more elaborate theory to which we could compare our observations. It is however of interest to quantify the error level on temperature measurements, which we will do in the remainder of this section at the gross estimate level. Interaction-driven forces that affect the expansion can be divided into two distinct classes Pedri et al. (2003): hydrodynamic forces on one hand, predominant above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ in Gerbier et al. (2003), and mean-field repulsion on the other, which play a minor role above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$, but becomes increasingly important with decreasing $`T`$ due to the presence of the condensate dyndep . Both effects are roughly speaking comparable in magnitude, and from our observations above $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ and HF calculations (see section A), we estimate an upper bound on the systematic error on temperature measurement, from $`10`$ % close to $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ (mostly due to hydrodynamic behavior) to $`20`$ % well below (mostly due to repulsion by the condensate), compatible with the observed deviation from the ideal gas expansion.

This is an upper bound because the temperature is found through a fit to the wings of the distribution the only, which is expected to reduce effect of mean-field repulsion. The close agreement we find between the calculated release energy and the measured one in Fig. 3b, where we recall that the radial size used to deduce the expansion energy was found through a fit to the full profile, seems to indicate that fitting to the wings avoids counting most of the repulsion energy in the determination of the temperature, as expected. However, this need not be true for the hydrodynamic relaxation, which affects directly the momentum distribution. Just as above $`T_\mathrm{C}`$, hydrodynamic forces are thus likely to be the dominant source of systematic error in most of the temperature range in elongated traps such as ours.

### V.2 Compression of the condensate by the thermal cloud

We conclude this section by examining the axial length of the condensate, which is reasonably immune to the effects discussed above because the axial expansion of the condensate is very slow: the measured length thus stays close to the in-trap length. From condensed fraction measurements, it is clear that the semi-ideal model is not sufficient to reproduce our results, meaning that the mutual interaction between condensed and non-condensed atoms is observable. This also seen from the length of the condensate inferred from the two-component fit, which is reduced when compared to the TF length calculated with the number of condensate atoms we measure. A quantitative comparison can be made only by taking into account the slow axial expansion. In the absence of a complete theory, we assume that the axial length is rescaled from the equilibrium length by the same factor as a condensate in the TF regime, $`b_z1+\pi \omega _z^2t/2\omega _{}`$ 1.04 for our parameters Castin and Dum (1996); Kagan et al. (1997). With this assumption, we find our data to be in reasonable agreement with the HF length, whereas the TF prediction is found systematically too high (see Fig. 6). This reduction can be attributed to the thermal cloud compression discussed in appendix A: at equilibrium, the shell of thermal atoms surrounding the condensate exerts a force towards the trap center, reducing its extension when compared to a “free”, TF condensate.

## VI Conclusion

In this paper, we have investigated experimentally the thermodynamics of a trapped, interacting Bose gas over a wide range of temperatures, from $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ down to $`0.2T_\mathrm{c}`$. We have used the standard time-of-flight analysis, complemented by the use of coherent Bragg scattering to filter the condensate out of the thermal cloud. The latter technique allows us to reach lower temperatures and higher condensed fractions than those accessible by the usual method. We have investigated primarily two quantities, the condensed fraction and the (radial) release energy. The data display without ambiguity an interacting gas behavior, and are in agreement at a few percent level with a Hartree-Fock description of the mixed cloud. This highlights the pertinence of this simple description of the interacting, trapped Bose gas at finite temperature. Moreover, this gives evidence for mutual interaction between the condensate and the thermal cloud close to $`T_\mathrm{c}`$. Although these effects are small, they are measurable and should be taken into account in precise comparisons to the theory of finite temperature, Bose-Einstein condensed gases.

A more thorough quantitative test of theory for ground state occupation and similar thermodynamic properties is however hindered by the lack of theory to understand the expansion of a mixed cloud. For instance, the data in Fig. 2a lie systematically slightly below the theory, which may be due to an underestimation of the condensed fraction or the temperature: as described above, we use an ideal Bose distribution to fit the thermal component. This assumption contradicts the principal conclusion of this paper, that ideal gas approximations are far from sufficient at the desired level of accuracy. Although the experiments described in this paper suggest an accuracy on temperature of order 10 % at least, we have also shown that the density profile deviates from an ideal gas near the center of the cloud, and stressed that hydrodynamic and mean-field effects in the expansion are not properly accounted for. Systematic errors may thus still be present, and a better accuracy is not guaranteed with the methods used in this paper. Numerical work, for instance along the lines of Zaremba et al. (1999), may help study the expansion of mixed clouds and improve the standard analysis procedure.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank D. Guéry-Odelin, S. Giorgini, J. Dalibard, G. V. Shlyapnikov, J. Retter and D. Boiron for useful discussions and comments on the manuscript, as well as D. Clément for his work on a related project. JHT acknowledges support from a Châteaubriand fellowship, from CNRS and from NSERC, and MH from IXSEA. This work was supported by Délégation Générale de l’Armement, the European Union (Cold Quantum Gas network), INTAS (contract 211-855) and XCORE.

## Appendix A Simple models of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensed gas at finite temperatures

In this Appendix, we briefly summarize the three different models to which we compare our observations. We use as a temperature scale the critical temperature of an ideal gas in the thermodynamic limitDalfovo et al. (1999), $`k_\mathrm{B}T_\mathrm{c}^0=\mathrm{}\overline{\omega }[N/\zeta (3)]^{1/3}`$, where $`\zeta `$ is the Riemann function, and $`\overline{\omega }=\omega _{}^{2/3}\omega _z^{1/3}`$ is the geometrical mean of the trapping frequencies. We make three key assumptions to simplify the theoretical description. For the condensate, we suppose that the condition $`N_0a/\overline{\sigma }1`$ holds, where $`\overline{\sigma }=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/M\overline{\omega }}`$ is the mean ground state width and $`a`$ the scattering length. This ensures that the condensate is in the TF regime. At very low temperatures, where the condensed fraction is almost unity, this gives the condensate density $`n_0=n_{\mathrm{TF}}`$ as

$`n_{\mathrm{TF}}(𝐫)=[\mu _{\mathrm{TF}}V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝐫)]/U,`$ (6)
where $`U=4\pi \mathrm{}^2a/M`$ is the mean-field coupling constant. The TF chemical potential is $`\mu _{\mathrm{TF}}=(\mathrm{}\overline{\omega }/2)\times (15N_0a/\overline{\sigma })^{2/5}`$. For the thermal cloud, we assume $`k_\mathrm{B}T\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$ for the semi-classical approximation to hold, and use a mean-field description which treats thermal atoms as independent particles evolving in a self-consistent static potential $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(𝐫)`$ (see below). The distribution function in phase space for thermal particles then reads

$$f(𝐫,𝐩)=\frac{1}{e^{\beta [(𝐫,𝐩)\mu ]}1},$$
(7)
with the semi-classical hamiltonian $`(𝐫,𝐩)=𝐩^2/2M+V_{\mathrm{eff}}(𝐫)`$, the chemical potential $`\mu `$, and $`\beta =1/k_\mathrm{B}T`$. The particle density distribution for the thermal component, $`n_{\mathrm{th}}`$, is found by integegration over momenta and reads

$`n_{\mathrm{th}}(𝐫)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda _\mathrm{T}^3}}g_{3/2}\left\{\mathrm{exp}\left[\beta \left(\mu V_{\mathrm{eff}}(𝐫)\right)\right]\right\}.`$ (8)
Each model detailed below is thus specified by the precise form of $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}`$: in the ideal gas model, $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ reduces to the trapping potential, in the semi-ideal model, it includes the mean-field of the condensate only, and in the HF model, it also takes the mean field of the thermal atoms into account.

### A.1 Ideal gas model

The simplest approximation neglects all interactive contributions to the effective potential, which reduces to the trapping field,

$$V_{\mathrm{eff}}\mu =V_{\mathrm{ext}}\mu .$$
(9)
The thermodynamic quantities follow the ideal-gas laws (see for instance Dalfovo et al. (1999)), and impose in particular $`\mu =0`$ below $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`\frac{N_0}{N}=1\left(\frac{T}{T_\mathrm{c}^0}\right)^3`$ for $`TT_\mathrm{c}^0`$. This ideal gas description is thus incompatible with the existence of a TF condensate, that imply $`\mu =\mu _{\mathrm{TF}}>0`$, and it should be considered as a reasonable approximation only for $`k_\mathrm{B}T\mu `$.

### A.2 Semi-ideal model

The repulsion of the thermal cloud by condensed atoms is taken into account in the so-called “semi-ideal” model Minguzzi et al. (1997); Naraschewski and Stamper-Kurn (1998), which considers a TF condensate containing $`N_0<N`$ atoms plus a quantum-saturated, ideal thermal gas moving in the combined trapping plus condensate mean field potential,

$`V_{\mathrm{eff}}(𝐫)\mu `$ $`=`$ $`V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝐫)+2Un_{\mathrm{TF}}(𝐫)\mu _{\mathrm{TF}}.`$
The factor of 2 accounts for exchange collisions between atoms in different quantum states Dalfovo et al. (1999). Note that the condensed atom number $`N_0`$ should be found self-consistently for a given T, under the constraint that the total atom number is fixed.

The semi-ideal model correctly predicts the most important feature in the static density profile of trapped interacting Bose gases. As soon as the condensed fraction is larger than a few percent, the density of the condensate greatly exceeds the density of the thermal component. Therefore, the condensate mean field is stronger and repels the thermal cloud from the center of the trap, digging a hole in the thermal density distribution.

### A.3 Self-consistent Hartree-Fock model

Although qualitatively correct and appealing because of its simplicity, the semi-ideal model is not sufficient to describe precisely our experiments. Interactions among thermal atoms and the backaction of the thermal cloud on the condensate have to be taken into account, which we do here in the HF approximation Goldman et al. (1981); Huse and Siggia (1982); Oliva (1989); Bagnato et al. (1988); Shi and Zheng (1997a, b); Giorgini et al. (1997a), corresponding to a self-consistent potential

$$V_{\mathrm{eff}}(𝐫)\mu =V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝐫)+2Un_0(𝐫)+2Un_{\mathrm{th}}(𝐫)\mu .$$
(10)
The equilibrium condensate density is no longer simply given by the TF profile, but depends also on the thermal density through

$$n_0(𝐫)=\frac{\mu V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝐫)2Un_{\mathrm{th}}(𝐫)}{U}.$$
(11)
A self-consistent numerical solution with a fixed atom number N fixes the finite T chemical potential, $`\mu =Un_0(\mathrm{𝟎})+2Un_{\mathrm{th}}(\mathrm{𝟎})`$, from which all other quantities can be determined. For instance, the interaction energy, which contains mixed terms describing the mutual influence of the condensate and the thermal cloud, can be written as $`E_{\mathrm{int}}=E_0+k_\mathrm{B}T(2\zeta _0+\zeta _{\mathrm{th}})`$, where

$`E_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{2}}{\displaystyle d^{(3)}𝐫n_0(𝐫)^2},`$ (12)
$`\zeta _0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{k_\mathrm{B}T}}{\displaystyle d^{(3)}𝐫n_0(𝐫)n_{\mathrm{th}}(𝐫)},`$ (13)
$`\zeta _{\mathrm{th}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{k_\mathrm{B}T}}{\displaystyle d^{(3)}𝐫\left(n_{\mathrm{th}}(𝐫)\right)^2}.`$ (14)
The kinetic energy is entirely due to the thermal cloud in the TF approximation, and reads

$`E_{\mathrm{kin}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{h^3}d^{(3)}𝐫d^{(3)}𝐩\frac{𝐩^2}{2M}f(𝐫,𝐩)}.`$ (15)
Numerical solution of the HF model displays two additional features compared to the semi-ideal model. First, mean-field interactions lower the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation Giorgini et al. (1996); Gerbier et al. (2003). Second, there is a back-action of the thermal cloud on the condensate: the mean-field exerted by the shell of thermal atoms surrounding the condensate acts in return to compress it, increasing its density and reducing its axial length $`L_0`$ according to

$`L_0^2={\displaystyle \frac{2g}{m\omega _z^2}}\left\{n_0\left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\lambda _\mathrm{T}^3}}\left(g_{3/2}\left[e^{\frac{gn_0\left(\mathrm{𝟎}\right)}{k_\mathrm{B}T}}\right]g_{3/2}\left[1\right]\right)\right\}.`$ (16)
This compression effect is directly observed in section V.1, and indirectly through the measurements of condensed fraction in section III.

A further step forward would be to include collective effects in the model. However, reference Dalfovo et al. (1997) points out that low-energy, collective excitations cause a minute change in the thermodynamic properties of the system even at relatively low temperatures, $`T\mu `$. Another approach, based on Quantum Monte-Carlo calculations Krauth (1996); Holzmann and Castin (1999), has confirmed that the HF approximation could reproduce the thermodynamics of the trapped clouds to a very good accuracy.


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# Suppression of magnetic relaxation processes in hard superconductors by a transverse AC magnetic field

## Abstract

The effect of the transverse AC magnetic field on relaxation process in YBa2Cu3Ox melt-textured superconductor was studied. A factor of 50 suppression of the relaxation rate could be achieved at the expense of some reduction in the maximum trapped field, with the magnetic-induction gradient being unchanged. This phenomenon is interpreted as a result of an increase of the pinning force after the action of the transverse AC magnetic field.

The electrodynamics of hard superconductors was under study for a long time. A wide variety of interesting phenomena were discovered and interpreted on the basis of the developed concepts. One of them is the suppression of static magnetization under the action of a transverse AC magnetic field. First, this phenomenon was observed and interpreted by Yamafuji and coauthors in Refs. yama1, ; yama2, . If one places a superconducting strip into a perpendicular static (DC) magnetic field $`𝐇`$ and then apply an AC magnetic field $`𝐡(t)`$ along the strip surface, the critical profile of the static magnetic flux changes noticeably. The short vortices oriented in perpendicular to the strip are shown to bend and move in such a way that the static magnetic flux tends to become homogeneous. This phenomenon and its consequences were studied theoretically in detail in recent papers brand1 ; brand2 .

The other origin of the suppression of the static magnetization by the transverse AC magnetic field (the collapse phenomenon) was considered in Refs. col-new, ; cut, ; kin, ; cross, ; felpap, ; aniscol, . If the vortex length $`L`$ exceeds significantly the penetration depth of the AC field, the vortex bend does not play an essential role and the flux-line cutting mechanism (the phenomenon predicted by Clem Clem ) is put in the forefront. As was shown in Refs. cut, ; kin, ; felpap, , it is the flux-line cutting that provides the homogenization of the static magnetic flux in the wide areas of the sample bulk where the AC field has penetrated (the creation of collapse zone). If the AC amplitude $`h`$ exceeds the penetration field $`H_p`$ the distribution of the static magnetic induction becomes homogeneous in the whole sample bulk and the magnetic moment disappears. The collapse of the magnetization, closely related to the collapse of the transport current collapse ; buf , was observed in Refs. park, ; col-new, ; felpap, ; aniscol, .

It is well-known that the inhomogeneous magnetic flux distribution is metastable. According to the classical paper by Anderson Ander , such a state of a superconductor relaxes to the homogeneous one following the logarithmic law. Within the existing concept on the collapse, one could expect a noticeable decrease of the relaxation rate of the magnetic moment after the action of the AC field. Indeed, the surface homogeneous region of the sample, the collapse zone, should be filled by the vortices and the critical gradient should be established before the vortices start to leave the sample and the magnetic moment begins to decrease. In the present paper we have checked this assumption and made sure that the relaxation rate of the DC magnetic moment is actually decreased significantly by the action of the transverse AC magnetic field. Surprisingly, we have observed a striking concomitant phenomenon which appears to be of general interest in vortex matter. Not only the magnetic moment does not changes, but the spatial distribution of the static magnetic flux holds the shape without significant relaxation for a long time after the action of AC field.

A melt-textured YBCO plate-like sample of $`9.3\times 7.4\times 1.5`$ mm3 in sizes was cut from a homogeneous part of a bulk textured cylinder grown by the seeding technique. The homogeneity was checked by a scanning Hall-probe. The c-axis was perpendicular to the largest face of the sample. The characteristic value of the critical current density $`J_c`$ in the ab plane is of the order of 13 kA/cm2. The ‘static’ magnetization $`M`$ was measured by a vibrating sample magnetometer in the external magnetic field $`𝐇𝐜`$ created by an electromagnet. The zero-field cooled sample was exposed to the magnetic field of 12 kOe which was further reduced to 5 kOe; from this point, the relaxation measurement was started. The above-mentioned fields are essentially higher than the penetration field of the sample (1.6 kOe). A commercial Hall-probe was fixed on the sample to measure the evolution of the magnetic induction locally. The other Hall-probe with the sensitive zone of $`0.3\times 0.3`$ mm2 was used to scan the magnetic induction distribution on the sample surface. The distance from the sample to the sensitive zone of the probe was about 0.2 mm. The Hall measurements were performed in the zero field after exposition of the sample to $`H=12`$ kOe. The AC magnetic field $`𝐡\mathrm{𝐚𝐛}`$ was a computer-generated triangle-wave with the frequency $`F=140`$ Hz. The AC field could be applied for a definite number of periods and stopped exactly at the end of the period (at $`h=0`$). In our experiments we used 999 full cycles of the AC field. All the measurements were performed at the liquid nitrogen temperature $`T=77`$ K.

Figure 1 demonstrates the influence of the orthogonal AC magnetic field on the relaxation of $`M`$. The conventional (without the AC field) relaxation is shown to follow the logarithmic law, that implies an exponential current-voltage characteristic (CVC) $`E\mathrm{exp}[(U/kT)(1J/J_{c0})]`$ Ander  (see inset), where $`J_{c0}`$ is a depinning current at the zero temperature and $`U`$ is a pinning-well depth. For the other run, at $`t20`$ s the AC field of the amplitude $`h`$ was applied, followed by the sharp drop in the magnetization due to the collapse-effect cross . When the AC field action has finished, we can see almost no relaxation for the first 100 seconds and essentially reduced logarithmic relaxation rate $`S=\mathrm{d}M/\mathrm{d}\mathrm{ln}t`$ for the rest of the observation period.

To reduce the minor effect of the magnetic-field relaxation in the electromagnet on the magnetization we studied the temporal dependence of the trapped magnetic induction $`B_{tr}`$ in the central part of the sample without any external magnetic field by the Hall-probe. Three curves in Fig. 2 correspond to the same magnetic prehistory of the sample, but differ from each other because of the action of the AC field with different amplitudes. The upper curve is obtained for the case when the AC field was not switched on during the measurement at all, $`h=0`$. Two lower curves demonstrate the influence of the AC field on the relaxation of $`B_{tr}`$. All curves in Fig. 2 follow the same logarithmic-like law before switching on the AC field. Switching on the AC field results in a giant suppression of the relaxation rate (5 – 60 times). The inset to Fig. 2 shows that the decrease of the relaxation rate depends essentially on the amplitude of the AC field and $`B_{tr}`$ does not follow the logarithmic law for the whole time-window.

The above mentioned results seem clear enough within the existing conception of the collapse. Indeed, the abrupt decrease of the static magnetization under the action of the AC field (the jumps shown in Fig. 1 and 2) is connected to the suppression of the DC shielding currents in all sample regions where the AC field penetrates. There exist two different mechanisms of such a suppression which are actual in the system of relatively short vortices yama1 ; yama2  and long ones col-new ; cut ; cross ; felpap . In our case, the both mechanisms play perhaps the essential role. The suppression of the relaxation of $`M`$ and $`B_{tr}`$ could be easily interpreted as a result of the collapse: vortices can not leave the sample before the sufficient gradient of the magnetic induction would be restored in the surface regions of the sample. From the macroscopic point of view, the other explanation looks plausible. As we reduce the magnetization (and current density) significantly, we should get a huge decrease in $`\mathrm{d}M/\mathrm{d}tE`$ in accordance with the exponential CVC (see inset to Fig. 1). However, this explanation will work only in the case of the uniform distribution of the shielding currents.

To clarify the real influence of the AC field on the relaxation process we have investigated the temporal evolution of the DC magnetic field distribution by the scanning Hall-probe. The spatial distribution $`B(x)`$ (across the AC field direction) of the trapped DC magnetic field is shown in Fig. 3. The unperturbed curves (closed symbols) demonstrate Bean-like profiles of the magnetic flux distribution which relaxes obviously in one hour. After the action of the AC field (open symbols) the relaxation is suppressed significantly in accordance with the data of Fig. 2. The change in the profile width along $`x`$-axis is due to the collapse of the DC shielding currents in the regions of the sample where the AC field has penetrated (the ‘collapsed’ regions marked with ‘C’ in Fig. 4). Even at a first glance at the curves in Fig. 3 one can reveal a very important consequence of the action of the transverse AC field. The magnetic field distribution in the central part of the sample before and after the action of the AC field differs by the vertical displacement, with the gradient being the same. This means that the current densities remain their initial values in all sample regions where the AC field has not penetrated along the $`x`$-direction. So, after the action of the AC field, we get the nonuniform situation then the shielding-current density remains changeless or becomes zero.

The most interesting feature of the relaxation after the action of the AC field is the following. Not only the magnetization and the magnetic induction but the distribution of the DC-field gradient, i. e. distribution of the DC shielding currents, stop the relaxation after the action of the AC field. The vortices in the central part of the sample (‘R1’ and ‘R2’ regions in Fig. 4) could not move into the collapsed regions (‘C’). This is probably due to impossibility to overcome the cutting barrier Indenbom , because the ‘C’-regions are (at least partially) filled with the vortices aligned with the $`y`$-axis. However this is not enough to stop the relaxation at all because there are no visible obstacles for vortices in the ‘R2’-region to creep along the $`y`$-direction.

We suppose that the penetration of the AC field from the largest ($`xy`$) faces of the sample is of great importance. The first possible reason is an increase in the vortex length accompanied by the pinning energy gain, tending to the increase of the critical current density, because the vortices turn out to be ‘anchored’ by their tails (in the ‘A’-regions). The elongation of the vortices occurs in such a way (along $`y`$-axis) that there is no additional Lorentz force directed outside the sample (along $`x`$\- and $`y`$-directions). Thus, the shielding currents become subcritical resulting in the exponential decrease of the relaxation rate. However, to explain the significant decrease of $`S`$ by the vortex-length increase along, the relative vortex elongation must be of the order of the logarithmic relaxation-rate decrease, which is hardly possible. Moreover, in the collective pinning approach Blatter  the vortex elongation gives only sublinear term in the free energy. The other explanation could be based on the anisotropy of the pinning force in the YBCO superconductors. After the action of the AC field, parts (segments) of the vortices in the ‘A’-regions can be aligned and locked-in in the ab-plane leading to an increase of the pinning force. The action of the AC field could also result in the bend or muddling of the vortices in the ‘A’-regions at the scale of 100–1000 vortex-lattice periods. As a result, a significant increase of the vortex-bundle size $`R`$ can take place. This, in turn, can lead to the increase of the collective pinning potential Blatter  and to the observed suppression of the relaxation rate.

Summarizing, we have observed the giant decrease of the relaxation rate after the action of the transverse AC magnetic field. This effect exists in the relaxation of the ‘static’ magnetization and the local value of the trapped magnetic induction. Besides, after the action of the AC magnetic field, the distribution of the magnetic induction on the sample surface turns out to be frozen with the same critical current density. The observed effect can be a result of the increase of the collective pinning potential due to the increase of the vortex-bundles dimension in the ab-plane. The increase of the vortex length accompanied by partial locking of the vortex segments in the ab-planes could also be a reason of this phenomenon.

We thank A. L. Rakhmanov for helpful discussions. This work is supported by INTAS (grant 01-2282), RFBR (grant 03-02-17169), and Russian National Program on Superconductivity (contract 40.012.1.1.11.46).


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Coset Space Dimensional Reduction (CSDR)  is a unification scheme for obtaining realistic particle models from gauge theories on higher $`D`$-dimensional spaces $`M^D`$. It suggests that a unification of the gauge and Higgs sectors of the Standard Model can be achieved in higher than four dimensions. Moreover the addition of fermions in the higher-dimensional gauge theory leads naturally, after CSDR, to Yukawa couplings in four dimensions.

We study CSDR in the non-commutative context and set the rules for constructing new particle models that might be phenomenologically relevant. One could study CSDR with the whole parent space $`M^D`$ being non-commutative or with just non-commutative Minkowski space or non-commutative internal space. We specialize here to this last situation and therefore eventually we obtain Lorentz covariant theories on commutative Minkowski space. We further specialize to fuzzy non-commutativity, i.e. to matrix type non-commutativity. Thus, following , we consider non-commutative spaces like those studied in refs.  and implementing the CSDR principle on these spaces we obtain new particle models.

## 2 Fuzzy sphere

The fuzzy sphere  is a matrix approximation of the usual sphere $`S^2`$. The algebra of functions on $`S^2`$ (for example spanned by the spherical harmonics) is truncated at a given frequency and thus becomes finite dimensional. The truncation has to be consistent with the associativity of the algebra and this can be nicely achieved relaxing the commutativity property of the algebra. The fuzzy sphere is the “space” described by this non-commutative algebra. The algebra itself is that of $`N\times N`$ matrices. More precisely, the algebra of functions on the ordinary sphere can be generated by the coordinates of R3 modulo the relation $`_{\widehat{a}=1}^3x_{\widehat{a}}x_{\widehat{a}}=r^2`$. The fuzzy sphere $`S_F^2`$ at fuzziness level $`N1`$ is the non-commutative manifold whose coordinate functions $`iX_{\widehat{a}}`$ are $`N\times N`$ hermitian matrices proportional to the generators of the $`N`$-dimensional representation of $`SU\left(2\right)`$. They satisfy the condition $`_{\widehat{a}=1}^3X_{\widehat{a}}X_{\widehat{a}}=\alpha r^2`$ and the commutation relations

$$[X_{\widehat{a}},X_{\widehat{b}}]=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}X_{\widehat{c}},$$
(1)
where $`C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}=\epsilon _{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}/r`$ while the proportionality factor $`\alpha `$ goes as $`N^2`$ for $`N`$ large. Indeed it can be proven that for $`N\mathrm{}`$ one obtains the usual commutative sphere.

On the fuzzy sphere there is a natural $`SU\left(2\right)`$ covariant differential calculus. This calculus is three-dimensional and the derivations $`e_{\widehat{a}}`$ along $`X_{\widehat{a}}`$ of a function $`f`$ are given by $`e_{\widehat{a}}\left(f\right)=[X_{\widehat{a}},f].`$ Accordingly the action of the Lie derivatives on functions is given by

$$_{\widehat{a}}f=[X_{\widehat{a}},f];$$
(2)
these Lie derivatives satisfy the Leibniz rule and the $`SU\left(2\right)`$ Lie algebra relation

$$[_{\widehat{a}},_{\widehat{b}}]=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}_{\widehat{c}}.$$
(3)
In the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit the derivations $`e_{\widehat{a}}`$ become $`e_{\widehat{a}}=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}x^{\widehat{b}}^{\widehat{c}}`$ and only in this commutative limit the tangent space becomes two dimensional. The exterior derivative is given by

$$df=[X_{\widehat{a}},f]\theta ^{\widehat{a}}$$
(4)
with $`\theta ^{\widehat{a}}`$ the one-forms dual to the vector fields $`e_{\widehat{a}}`$, $`<e_{\widehat{a}},\theta ^{\widehat{b}}>=\delta _{\widehat{a}}^{\widehat{b}}`$. The space of one-forms is generated by the $`\theta ^{\widehat{a}}`$’s in the sense that for any one-form $`\omega =_if_i\left(dh_i\right)t_i`$ we can always write $`\omega =_{\widehat{a}=1}^3\omega _{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{a}}`$ with given functions $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}`$ depending on the functions $`f_i`$, $`h_i`$ and $`t_i`$. The action of the Lie derivatives on one-forms is given by

$$_{\widehat{a}}\left(\theta ^{\widehat{b}}\right)=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}\theta ^{\widehat{c}}$$
(5)
and it is easily seen to commute with the exterior differential $`d`$. On a general one-form $`\omega =\omega _{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{a}}`$ we have $`_{\widehat{b}}\omega =_{\widehat{b}}\left(\omega _{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{a}}\right)=[X_{\widehat{b}},\omega _{\widehat{a}}]\theta ^{\widehat{a}}\omega _{\widehat{a}}C_{\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}^{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{c}}`$ and therefore

$$\left(_{\widehat{b}}\omega \right)_{\widehat{a}}=[X_{\widehat{b}},\omega _{\widehat{a}}]\omega _{\widehat{c}}C_{\widehat{b}\widehat{a}}^{\widehat{c}};$$
(6)
this formula will be fundamental for formulating the CSDR principle on fuzzy cosets.

The differential geometry on the product space Minkowski times fuzzy sphere, $`M^4\times S_F^2`$, is easily obtained from that on $`M^4`$ and on $`S_F^2`$. For example a one-form $`A`$ defined on $`M^4\times S_F^2`$ is written as

$$A=A_\mu dx^\mu +A_{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{a}}$$
(7)
with $`A_\mu =A_\mu (x^\mu ,X_{\widehat{a}})`$ and $`A_{\widehat{a}}=A_{\widehat{a}}(x^\mu ,X_{\widehat{a}})`$.

One can also introduce spinors on the fuzzy sphere and study the Lie derivative on these spinors. Although here we have sketched the differential geometry on the fuzzy sphere, one can study other (higher dimensional) fuzzy spaces (e.g. fuzzy $`CP^M`$) and with similar techniques their differential geometry.

## 3 CSDR over fuzzy coset spaces

First we consider on $`M^4\times \left(S/R\right)_F`$ a non-commutative gauge theory with gauge group $`G=U\left(P\right)`$ and examine its four dimensional interpretation. The action is

$$𝒜_{YM}=\frac{1}{4}d^4xTrtr_GF_{MN}F^{MN},$$
(8)
where $`Tr`$ denotes integration over the fuzzy coset $`\left(S/R\right)_F`$ described by $`N\times N`$ matrices, and $`tr_G`$ is the gauge group $`G`$ trace. The higher-dimensional field strength $`F_{MN}`$ decomposed in four-dimensional space-time and extra-dimensional components reads as follows $`(F_{\mu \nu },F_{\mu \widehat{b}},F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}});`$ explicitly the various components of the field strength are given by

$`F_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu A_\nu _\nu A_\mu +[A_\mu ,A_\nu ],`$ (9)
$`F_{\mu \widehat{a}}`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu A_{\widehat{a}}[X_{\widehat{a}},A_\mu ]+[A_\mu ,A_{\widehat{a}}],`$
$`F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}`$ $`=`$ $`[X_{\widehat{a}},A_{\widehat{b}}][X_{\widehat{b}},A_{\widehat{a}}]+[A_{\widehat{a}},A_{\widehat{b}}]C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}^{\widehat{c}}A_{\widehat{c}}.`$ (10)
Under an infinitesimal $`G`$ gauge transformation $`\lambda =\lambda (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})`$ we have

$$\delta A_{\widehat{a}}=[X_{\widehat{a}},\lambda ]+[\lambda ,A_{\widehat{a}}],$$
(11)
thus $`F_{MN}`$ is covariant under local $`G`$ gauge transformations: $`F_{MN}F_{MN}+[\lambda ,F_{MN}]`$. This is an infinitesimal abelian $`U\left(1\right)`$ gauge transformation if $`\lambda `$ is just an antihermitian function of the coordinates $`x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}}`$ while it is an infinitesimal nonabelian $`U\left(P\right)`$ gauge transformation if $`\lambda `$ is valued in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(P\right)\right)`$, the Lie algebra of hermitian $`P\times P`$ matrices. In the following we will always assume $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(P\right)\right)`$ elements to commute with the coordinates $`X^{\widehat{a}}`$. In fuzzy/non-commutative gauge theory and in Fuzzy-CSDR a fundamental role is played by the covariant coordinate,

$$\phi _{\widehat{a}}X_{\widehat{a}}+A_{\widehat{a}}.$$
(12)
This field transforms indeed covariantly under a gauge transformation, $`\delta \left(\phi _{\widehat{a}}\right)=[\lambda ,\phi _{\widehat{a}}].`$ In terms of $`\phi `$ the field strength in the non-commutative directions reads,

$`F_{\mu \widehat{a}}`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu \phi _{\widehat{a}}+[A_\mu ,\phi _{\widehat{a}}]=D_\mu \phi _{\widehat{a}},`$ (13)
$`F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}`$ $`=`$ $`[\phi _{\widehat{a}},\phi _{\widehat{b}}]C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}^{\widehat{c}}\phi _{\widehat{c}};`$ (14)
and using these expressions the action reads

$$𝒜_{YM}=d^4xTrtr_G\left(\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }^2+\frac{1}{2}\left(D_\mu \phi _{\widehat{a}}\right)^2V\left(\phi \right)\right),$$
(15)
where the potential term $`V\left(\phi \right)`$ is the $`F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}`$ kinetic term (recall $`F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}`$ is antihermitian so that $`V\left(\phi \right)`$ is hermitian and non-negative)

$$V\left(\phi \right)=\frac{1}{4}Trtr_G\underset{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}{}F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}F_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}=\frac{1}{4}Trtr_G\left([\phi _{\widehat{a}},\phi _{\widehat{b}}][\phi ^{\widehat{a}},\phi ^{\widehat{b}}]4C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\widehat{c}}\phi ^{\widehat{a}}\phi ^{\widehat{b}}\phi ^{\widehat{c}}+2r^2\phi ^2\right).$$

This action is naturally interpreted as an action in four dimensions. The infinitesimal $`G`$ gauge transformation with gauge parameter $`\lambda (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})`$ can indeed be interpreted just as an $`M^4`$ gauge transformation. We write

$$\lambda (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})=\lambda ^\alpha (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})𝒯^\alpha =\lambda ^{h,\alpha }\left(x^\mu \right)T^h𝒯^\alpha ,$$
(16)
where $`𝒯^\alpha `$ are hermitian generators of $`U\left(P\right)`$, $`\lambda ^\alpha (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})`$ are $`N\times N`$ antihermitian matrices and thus are expressible as $`\lambda \left(x^\mu \right)^{\alpha ,h}T^h`$ with $`T^h`$ antihermitian generators of $`U\left(N\right)`$. Now the Lie algebra is the tensor product of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$ and $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(P\right)\right)`$, it is indeed $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(NP\right)\right)`$. Similarly we rewrite the gauge field $`A_\nu `$ as $`A_\nu (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})=A_\nu ^\alpha (x^\mu ,X^{\widehat{a}})𝒯^\alpha =A_\nu ^{h,\alpha }\left(x^\mu \right)T^h𝒯^\alpha `$ and interpret it as a $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(NP\right)\right)`$ valued gauge field on $`M^4`$. Similarly we treat $`\phi _{\widehat{a}}`$.

Up to now we have just performed a fuzzy Kaluza-Klein reduction. Indeed in the commutative case the expression (15) corresponds to rewriting the initial lagrangian on $`M^4\times S^2`$ using spherical harmonics on $`S^2`$. Here the space of functions is finite dimensional and therefore the infinite tower of modes reduces to the finite sum given by $`Tr`$.

Next we reduce the number of gauge fields and scalars in the action (15) by applying the CSDR scheme. Since Lie $`SU\left(2\right)`$ acts on the fuzzy sphere $`\left(SU\left(2\right)/U\left(1\right)\right)_F`$, and more in general the group $`S`$ acts on the fuzzy coset $`\left(S/R\right)_F`$, we can state the CSDR principle in the same way as in the continuum case, i.e. the fields in the theory must be invariant under the infinitesimal $`SU\left(2\right)`$, respectively $`S`$, action up to an infinitesimal gauge transformation

$$_{\widehat{b}}\phi =\delta ^{W_{\widehat{b}}}\phi =W_{\widehat{b}}\phi ,_{\widehat{b}}A=\delta ^{W_{\widehat{b}}}A=DW_{\widehat{b}},$$
(17)
where $`A`$ is the one-form gauge potential $`A=A_\mu dx^\mu +A_{\widehat{a}}\theta ^{\widehat{a}}`$, and $`W_{\widehat{b}}`$ depends only on the coset coordinates $`X^{\widehat{a}}`$ and (like $`A_\mu ,A_a`$) is antihermitian. We thus write $`W_{\widehat{b}}=W_{\widehat{b}}^\alpha 𝒯^\alpha ,\alpha =1,2\mathrm{}P^2,`$ where $`𝒯^i`$ are hermitian generators of $`U\left(P\right)`$ and $`\left(W_b^i\right)^{}=W_b^i`$, here  is hermitian conjugation on the $`X^{\widehat{a}}`$’s. Now in order to solve the constraints (17) we cannot follow the strategy adopted in the commutative case, where the constraints were studied just at one point of the coset (say $`y^a=0`$). This is due to the intrinsic nonlocality of the constraints. On the other hand the specific properties of the fuzzy case (e.g. the fact that partial derivatives are realized via commutators, the concept of covariant coordinate) allow to simplify and eventually solve the constraints. Indeed in terms of the covariant coordinate $`\phi _{\widehat{d}}=X_{\widehat{d}}+A_{\widehat{d}}`$ and of

$$\omega _{\widehat{a}}X_{\widehat{a}}W_{\widehat{a}},$$
(18)
the CSDR constraints assume a particularly simple form, namely

$$[\omega _{\widehat{b}},A_\mu ]=0,$$
(19)
$$C_{\widehat{b}\widehat{d}\widehat{e}}\phi ^{\widehat{e}}=[\omega _{\widehat{b}},\phi _{\widehat{d}}].$$
(20)
In addition we have a consistency condition following from the relation $`[_a,_{\widehat{b}}]=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}^{\widehat{c}}_{\widehat{c}}`$:

$$[\omega _{\widehat{a}},\omega _{\widehat{b}}]=C_{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}^{\widehat{c}}\omega _c,$$
(21)
where $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}`$ transforms as $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}\omega _{\widehat{a}}^{}=g\omega _{\widehat{a}}g^1.`$ One proceeds in a similar way for the spinor fields .

## 4 Solving the CSDR constraints for the fuzzy sphere

We consider $`\left(S/R\right)_F=S_F^2`$, i.e. the fuzzy sphere, and to be definite at fuzziness level $`N1`$ ($`N\times N`$ matrices). We study first the basic example where the gauge group $`G=U\left(1\right)`$. In this case the $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}=\omega _{\widehat{a}}\left(X^{\widehat{b}}\right)`$ appearing in the consistency condition (21) are $`N\times N`$ antihermitian matrices and therefore can be interpreted as elements of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$. On the other hand the $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}`$ satisfy the commutation relations (21) of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(SU\left(2\right)\right)`$. Therefore in order to satisfy the consistency condition (21) we have to embed $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(SU\left(2\right)\right)`$ in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$. Let $`T^h`$ with $`h=1,\mathrm{},\left(N\right)^2`$ be the generators of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$ in the fundamental representation, we can always use the convention $`h=(\widehat{a},u)`$ with $`\widehat{a}=1,2,3`$ and $`u=4,5,\mathrm{},N^2`$ where the $`T^{\widehat{a}}`$ satisfy the $`SU\left(2\right)`$ Lie algebra,

$$[T^{\widehat{a}},T^{\widehat{b}}]=C_{\widehat{c}}^{\widehat{a}\widehat{b}}T^{\widehat{c}}.$$
(22)
Then we define an embedding by identifying

$$\omega _{\widehat{a}}=T_{\widehat{a}}.$$
(23)
The constraint (19), $`[\omega _{\widehat{b}},A_\mu ]=0`$, then implies that the four-dimensional gauge group $`K`$ is the centralizer of the image of $`SU\left(2\right)`$ in $`U\left(N\right)`$, i.e.

$$K=C_{U\left(N\right)}\left(SU\left(\left(2\right)\right)\right)=SU\left(N2\right)\times U\left(1\right)\times U\left(1\right),$$

where the last $`U\left(1\right)`$ is the $`U\left(1\right)`$ of $`U\left(N\right)SU\left(N\right)\times U\left(1\right)`$. The functions $`A_\mu (x,X)`$ are arbitrary functions of $`x`$ but the $`X`$ dependence is such that $`A_\mu (x,X)`$ is $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(K\right)`$ valued instead of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$, i.e. eventually we have a four-dimensional gauge potential $`A_\mu \left(x\right)`$ with values in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(K\right)`$. Concerning the constraint (20), it is satisfied by choosing

$$\phi _{\widehat{a}}=r\phi \left(x\right)\omega _{\widehat{a}},$$
(24)
i.e. the unconstrained degrees of freedom correspond to the scalar field $`\phi \left(x\right)`$ which is a singlet under the four-dimensional gauge group $`K`$.

The choice (23) defines one of the possible embedding of $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(SU\left(2\right)\right)`$ in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$. For example we could also embed $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(SU\left(2\right)\right)`$ in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(N\right)\right)`$ using the irreducible $`N`$ dimensional rep. of $`SU\left(2\right)`$, i.e. we could identify $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}=X_{\widehat{a}}`$. The constraint (19) in this case implies that the four-dimensional gauge group is $`U\left(1\right)`$ so that $`A_\mu \left(x\right)`$ is $`U\left(1\right)`$ valued. The constraint (20) leads again to the scalar singlet $`\phi \left(x\right)`$.

In general, we start with a $`U\left(1\right)`$ gauge theory on $`M^4\times S_F^2`$. We solve the CSDR constraint (21) by embedding $`SU\left(2\right)`$ in $`U\left(N\right)`$. There exist $`p_N`$ embeddings, where $`p_N`$ is the number of ways one can partition the integer $`N`$ into a set of non-increasing positive integers . Then the constraint (19) gives the surviving four-dimensional gauge group. The constraint (20) gives the surviving four-dimensional scalars and eq. (24) is always a solution but in general not the only one. By setting $`\phi _{\widehat{a}}=\omega _{\widehat{a}}`$ we obtain always a minimum of the potential. This minimum is given by the chosen embedding of $`SU\left(2\right)`$ in $`U\left(N\right)`$.

In the $`G=U\left(P\right)`$ case, $`\omega _{\widehat{a}}=\omega _{\widehat{a}}\left(X^{\widehat{b}}\right)=\omega _{\widehat{a}}^{h,\alpha }T^h𝒯^\alpha `$ is an $`NP\times NP`$ hermitian matrix and in order to solve the constraint (21) we have to embed $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(SU\left(2\right)\right)`$ in $`\mathrm{Lie}\left(U\left(NP\right)\right)`$. All the results of the $`G=U\left(1\right)`$ case holds also here, we just have to replace $`N`$ with $`NP`$.

One proceeds in a similar way for more general fuzzy coset $`\left(S/R\right)_F`$ (e.g. fuzzy $`CP^M=SU\left(M+1\right)/U\left(M\right)`$) described by $`N\times N`$ matrices. The results are again similar, in particular one starts with a gauge group $`G=U\left(P\right)`$ on $`M^4\times \left(S/R\right)_F`$, and then the CSDR constraints imply that the four-dimensional gauge group $`K`$ is the centralizer of the image $`S_{U\left(NP\right)}`$ of $`S`$ in $`U\left(NP\right)`$, $`K=C_{U\left(NP\right)}\left(S_{U\left(NP\right)}\right)`$.

## 5 Discussion and Conclusions

The Fuzzy-CSDR has different features from the ordinary CSDR leading therefore to new four-dimensional particle models. Here we have stated the rules for the construction of such models; it may well be that Fuzzy-CSDR provides more realistic four-dimensional theories. Having in mind the construction of realistic models one can also combine the fuzzy and the ordinary CSDR scheme, for example considering $`M^4\times S^{}/R^{}\times \left(S/R\right)_F`$.

A major difference between fuzzy and ordinary CSDR is that in Fuzzy-CSDR the spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism takes already place by solving the Fuzzy-CSDR contraints. The four dimensional Higgs potential has the typical “mexican hat” shape, but it appears already spontaneously broken. Therefore in four dimensions appears only the physical Higgs field that survives after a spontaneous symmetry breaking. Correspondingly in the Yukawa sector of the theory  we obtain the results of the spontaneous symmetry breaking, i.e. massive fermions and Yukawa interactions among fermions and the physical Higgs field. We see that if one would like to describe the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the SM in the present framework, then one would be naturally led to large extra dimensions.

A fundamental difference between the ordinary CSDR and its fuzzy version is the fact that a non-abelian gauge group $`G`$ is not really required in high dimensions. Indeed the presence of a $`U\left(1\right)`$ in the higher-dimensional theory is enough to obtain non-abelian gauge theories in four dimensions.

Acknowledgment G. Z. would like to thank the organizers for the warm hospitality. P. M. and G. Z. acknowledge partial support by EU under the RTN contract HPRN-CT-2000-00148, the Greek-German Bilateral Programme IKYDA-2001 and by the NTUA programme for fundamental research “THALES”.