Superfluid dynamics of a Bose–Einstein condensate in a periodic potential

We investigate the superfluid properties of a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a one-dimensional periodic potential. We study, both analytically (in the tight binding limit) and numerically, the Bloch chemical potential, the Bloch energy and the Bogoliubov dispersion relation, and we introduce two different, density dependent, effective masses and group velocities. The Bogoliubov spectrum predicts the existence of sound waves, and the arising of energetic and dynamical instabilities at critical values of the BEC quasimomentum which dramatically affect its coherence properties. We investigate the dependence of the dipole and Bloch oscillation frequencies in terms of an effective mass averaged over the density of the condensate. We illustrate our results with several animations obtained solving numerically the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation. New Journal of Physics 5 (2003) 112.1–112.20 PII: S1367-2630(03)63071-5 1367-2630/03/000112+20$30.00 c © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft