Emulation of the evolution of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a time-dependent harmonic trap

Abstract

We emulate the ground state of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a time-dependent isotropic harmonic trap by constructing analytic simulacra of a transformed wavefunction in the regions around the origin and far from the origin. This transformed wavefunction is obtained through a pseudoconformal transformation and is a function of new spatial and temporal variables, while the simulacra are generalisations of asymptotic solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and they are matched by requiring continuity not only of the wavefunction and of its slope, but of its curvature as well. The resulting piecewise analytic simulacra coincide almost perfectly with the numerically obtained solutions of the time-dependent nonlinear Schrödinger equation and constitute an easy and accurate analytic method for describing fully the condensate ground state. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.