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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Complex chemical potential: signature of decay in a bose-einstein condensate
George E Cragg1, Arthur K Kerman
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, USA.
Abstract:
We explore the zero-temperature statics of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in which a Feshbach resonance creates a coupling to a second condensate component of quasibound molecules. Using a variational procedure to find the equation of state, the appearance of this binding is manifest in a collapsing ground state, where only the molecular condensate is present up to some critical density. Further, an excited state is seen to reproduce the usual low-density atomic condensate behavior in this system, but the molecular component is found to produce a coherent, many-body decay, quantified by the imaginary part of the chemical potential. Most importantly, the unique decay rate dependencies on density (approximately rho (3/2)) and on scattering length (approximately (5/2)) can be measured in experimental tests of this result.
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