L'interférométrie atomique a démontré sa capacité à effectuer des mesures de grande précision, notamment pour la réalisation de capteurs inertiels, les tests de physique fondamentale ou la mesure de constantes fondamentales. Une piste pour l'amélioration de la sensibilité des interféromètres atomiques est la réduction de la dispersion en vitesse de la source en utilisant un ensemble d'atomes ultra-froids pour augmenter le temps d'interrogation des atomes et accroitre la séparation spatiale entre les bras de l'interféromètre. Un nouvel interféromètre atomique à bras séparés est en construction au Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats et Réactivité de Toulouse. Ce dispositif répond à deux objectifs. Premièrement sa conception a pour but l'étude et le développement de nouveaux types de sources de condensat de Bose-Einstein (C.B.E.) double espèce de rubidium 85 et 87 adaptées à l'interférométrie. Cette source de C.B.E. repose sur l'utilisation de puces pour la manipulation et le refroidissement des atomes. Cette technologie est compacte et consomment peu d'énergie, ce qui est adaptée aux applications spatiales. L'autre objectif est d'utiliser cet interféromètre pour tester la neutralité de la matière via l'effet Aharonov-Bohm scalaire. Dans ce manuscrit je commence par exposer et justifer les choix techniques fait lors du dimensionnement et de la construction de la source de C.B.E. double isotopes. Par la suite, je présente les premiers résultats expérimentaux accompagnés de simulations numériques et d'explications théoriques. Lors de la première étape de refroidissement laser nous produisons un nuage de rubidium 87 et 85 contenant 4 × 10^10 atomes à une température de 10 µK avec un taux de cycle de 1 s. A la suite du refroidissement laser 8 × 10^9 atomes sont chargés dans le piège magnétique millimétrique de surface. Différentes expériences de caractérisation sont réalisées et expliquées à la lumières de simulations numériques. L'étude des fréquences de piégeage et de la profondeur a révélé les limites du premier prototype de piège millimétrique que nous avons réalisé au laboratoire. Cependant ces développements expérimentaux et théoriques servent à développer et implémenter dans le dispositif une nouvelle génération de puce à échelle micrométrique. / Atom interferometry has shown its interest for high precision measurements, such as inertial sensors, tests of fundamental physics or fundamental constant measurements. A way to improve sensitivity of such device is to reduce speed dispersion of the atomic cloud. The use of ultra-cold atoms allows increasing the interogation time of atoms and the spatial separation between the interferometer arms. The building of a new atom interferometer with separated arms is ongoing in the laboratory "Collisions Agrégats et Réactivité" at Toulouse. This new setup must meet two objectives. One aim of its conception is to study and develop a new kind of double species Bose-Einstein condensate (B.E.C.) source for atom interferometry with rubidium 87 and 85. This B.E.C. source relies on atom chip technology to cool down and manipulate atoms. This technology is compact and low power consuming, therefore suitable for transportable applications in space. A second aim is to use this interferometer to fix new boundary on the experimental value of atom neutrality thanks to the scalar Aharonov-Bohm effect. In this manuscript I start by exposing and justifying technical choices made for the design of the double isotope B.E.C. source. Then I present the first experimental results compared with numerical simulations and theoretical explanations. During the first laser cooling stage we produce a cloud including 4 × 10^10 rubidium atoms of both isotopes (87 and 85) at 10 µK. This operation can be repeated every second. Following the laser cooling 8×10^9 atoms are loaded into a millimeter sized magnetic trap. Various experiments were performed to characterize the trap. Studies of the trap frequency and depth revealed the limitations of this first prototype. However these theoretical and experimental developments led to design and future implementation of a new generation of micro-chip in our apparatus.

Estudamos as excitações de baixa energia, presentes em um gás de bosons homogêneo, de spin nulo, sujeitos a uma interação de dois corpos repulsiva e a temperatura zero, utilizando a aproximação gaussiana, que consiste num caso particular de aproximação de campo médio. As equações dinâmicas resultantes foram linearizadas ao redor da solução estática de Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov. Obtivemos uma banda contínua e limitada inferiormente, além de um segundo ramo discreto, que define um limite inferior para as excitações e que, ao contrário do resultado proveniente do tratamento de Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov, possui um comportamento linear sem gap com respeito ao momento da excitação no limite de grandes comprimentos de onda, ou seja, possui uma equação de dispersão do tipo fônon. Discutimos também a forma através da qual é possível gerar desvios do equilíbrio, vinculados aos estados excitados, e concluímos haver restrições sobre os possíveis desvios das grandezas características em campo médio gaussiano, quando tais desvios são gerados por transformações infinitesimais unitárias de um corpo tomadas até primeira ordem. / We study low-lying excitations of a spinless, homogeneous bose gas, with repulsive interaction, at zero temperature, in terms of a gaussian mean field approximation. The dynamical equations of this approximation have been linearized in small displacements from the well known static Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov solution. We obtain a gapped continous band of excitations above a discrete branch with phonon behavior at large wavelengths. We also discuss the allowed forms of excitations and conclude that restrictions exist for the allowed deviations of the general set of gaussian mean field parameters, when they are generated in first orders by infinitesimal unitary transformations.

acase@tulane.edu

The emergence of many-body physical phenomena from the quantum mechanical properties of atoms can be studied using ultracold alkali gases. The ability to manipulate both Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and degenerate Fermi gases (DFGs) with designer potential energy landscapes, variable interaction strengths and out-of-equilibrium initial conditions provides the opportunity to investigate collective behaviour under diverse conditions. With an appropriately chosen wavelength, optical standing waves provide a lattice potential for one target species while ignoring another spectator species. A “tune-in” scheme provides an especially strong potential for the target and works best for Li-Na, Li-K, and K-Na mixtures, while a “tune-out” scheme zeros the potential for the spectator, and is pre- ferred for Li-Cs, K-Rb, Rb-Cs, K-Cs, and 39K-40K mixtures. Species-selective lattices provide unique environments for studying many-body behaviour by allowing for a phonon-like background, providing for effective mass tuning, and presenting opportunities for increasing the phase-space density of one species. Ferromagnetism is manifest in a two-component DFG when the energetically preferred many-body configuration segregates components. Within the local density approximation (LDA), the characteristic energies and the three-body loss rate of the system all give an observable signature of the crossover to this ferromagnetic state in a trapped DFG when interactions are increased beyond kF a(0) = 1.84. Numerical simulations of an extension to the LDA that account for magnetization gradients show that a hedgehog spin texture emerges as the lowest energy configuration in the ferromagnetic regime. Explorations of strong interactions in 40K constitute the first steps towards the realization of ferromagnetism in a trapped 40K gas. The many-body dynamics of a 87Rb BEC in a double well potential are driven by spatial phase gradients and depend on the character of the junction. The amplitude and frequency characteristics of the transport across a tunable barrier show a crossover between two paradigms of superfluidity: Josephson plasma oscillations emerge for high barriers, where transport is via tunnelling, while hydrodynamic behaviour dominates for lower barriers. The phase dependence of the many-body dynamics is also evident in the observation of macroscopic quantum self trapping. Gross-Pitaevskii calculations facilitate the interpretation of system dynamics, but do not describe the observed damping.

The emergence of many-body physical phenomena from the quantum mechanical properties of atoms can be studied using ultracold alkali gases. The ability to manipulate both Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and degenerate Fermi gases (DFGs) with designer potential energy landscapes, variable interaction strengths and out-of-equilibrium initial conditions provides the opportunity to investigate collective behaviour under diverse conditions. With an appropriately chosen wavelength, optical standing waves provide a lattice potential for one target species while ignoring another spectator species. A “tune-in” scheme provides an especially strong potential for the target and works best for Li-Na, Li-K, and K-Na mixtures, while a “tune-out” scheme zeros the potential for the spectator, and is pre- ferred for Li-Cs, K-Rb, Rb-Cs, K-Cs, and 39K-40K mixtures. Species-selective lattices provide unique environments for studying many-body behaviour by allowing for a phonon-like background, providing for effective mass tuning, and presenting opportunities for increasing the phase-space density of one species. Ferromagnetism is manifest in a two-component DFG when the energetically preferred many-body configuration segregates components. Within the local density approximation (LDA), the characteristic energies and the three-body loss rate of the system all give an observable signature of the crossover to this ferromagnetic state in a trapped DFG when interactions are increased beyond kF a(0) = 1.84. Numerical simulations of an extension to the LDA that account for magnetization gradients show that a hedgehog spin texture emerges as the lowest energy configuration in the ferromagnetic regime. Explorations of strong interactions in 40K constitute the first steps towards the realization of ferromagnetism in a trapped 40K gas. The many-body dynamics of a 87Rb BEC in a double well potential are driven by spatial phase gradients and depend on the character of the junction. The amplitude and frequency characteristics of the transport across a tunable barrier show a crossover between two paradigms of superfluidity: Josephson plasma oscillations emerge for high barriers, where transport is via tunnelling, while hydrodynamic behaviour dominates for lower barriers. The phase dependence of the many-body dynamics is also evident in the observation of macroscopic quantum self trapping. Gross-Pitaevskii calculations facilitate the interpretation of system dynamics, but do not describe the observed damping.

In this dissertation, I have studied theoretical problems in statistical physics and electrodynamics of Bose particles, namely, mesoscopic effects in statistics of Bose- Einstein condensate (BEC) of atoms and electromagnetic waveguide effects of planar Bragg structures in Free Electron Lasers. A mesoscopic system of a trapped gas of Bose atoms is the most difficult for the theoretical analysis in quantum statistical physics since it cannot be studied by neither a quantum mechanics of the simple microscopic systems of one or very few atoms nor a standard statistical physics of the macroscopic systems that implies a thermodynamic limit. I present analytical formulas and numerical calculations for the moments and cumulants of BEC fluctuations in both ideal and weakly interacting gas. I analyze the universal scaling and structure of the BEC statistics in a mesoscopic ideal gas in the critical region. I present an exactly solvable Gaussian model of BEC in a degenerate interacting gas and its solution that confirms the universality and constraint-cut-off origin of the strongly non-Gaussian BEC statistics. I consider a two-energy-level trap with arbitrary degeneracy of an upper level and find an analytical solution for the condensate statistics in a mesoscopic ideal gas. I show how to model BEC in real traps by BEC in the two-level or three-level traps. I study wave propagation in the open oversized planar Bragg waveguides, in particular, in a planar metal waveguide with corrugation. I show that a step perturbation in a corrugation phase provides a high selectivity over transverse modes. I present a new Free Electron Laser (FEL) amplifier scheme, in which the radiation is guided by the planar Bragg structure with slightly corrugated walls and a sheet electron beam is traveling at a significant angle to the waveguide axis. By means of nonlinear analysis, I demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides an effective mode filtration and control over the structure of the output radiation and allows one to achieve amplification up to 30 dB in the existing FEL machines.

In this study we investigate the properties of trapped atoms subjected to rapid rotations. The study is divided into two distinct parts, one for fermions, another for bosons. In the case of the degenerate Fermi gas we explore the density structure of non-interacting cold atoms when they are rotated rapidly. On the other hand, for rapidly rotating two component Bose condensate, we search for new lattice structures in the presence of contact and dipolar interactions. First, the density structure of Fermi gases in a rotating trap is investigated. We focus on the anisotropic trap case, in which two distinct regimes, two and one dimensional regimes, depending on rotation frequency and anisotropy are observed. Two regimes can be illustrated by a simple description of maximum number of states between two Landau levels, which is strongly related to the dimensionality of the system. The regimes are separated from each other by a minimum point in this description. For small anisotropy values the density profiles show a step structure where each step is demonstrated by an elliptical plateau. Each plateau represents a Landau level with a constant density. The local density approximation describes the two dimensional regime with a perfect similarity in the structure of fermion density. The case for one dimensional regime is a little different from the two dimensional case. For large anisotropy values the Friedel oscillation is the dominant aspect of the density profiles. The density profiles show gaussian structure along the direction of strong trapping, and a semicircular form with prominent oscillations along the weak confining direction. Again, the system is nicely described by local density approximation in this regime. A smooth crossover between two regimes is observed, with a switching from a step structure profile to a soft edge transition with Friedel oscillations. At finite temperatures, the step structures are smeared out in two dimension. In one dimensional regime the Friedel oscillations are cleaned as soon as the temperature is turned on. The second part of the study is devoted to the investigation of different lattice structures in two component Bose condensates subjected to very fast rotation, this time in the presence of interactions. We explore the existence of new vortex lattice structures for dipolar two component condensates scanning a wide range of interaction strengths. We introduce a phase diagram as a function of intra and inter-component interactions showing different type of vortex lattice structures. New types of lattice structures, overlapped square and overlapped rectangular, emerge as a result of dipolar interactions and s-wave interaction for a two component condensate. The region where the attractive inter-component interactions dominate the repulsive interactions, the overlapped lattices are formed. The intra-component interactions, which defines the behavior of each component inside, result in different type of lattices by changing the strength of interactions. Two different limits of phase diagram reproduce the results of ordinary two component and dipolar one component Bose condensates. The results of calculation are in agreement with the results of previous studies for two regimes.

The variation of a magnetic field in the vicinity of a zero-energy resonance allows highly vibrationally excited molecules (‘Feshbach molecules’) to be produced from an ultracold atomic gas. In this thesis, we study the dynamics of this process. We begin by studying the dissociation of Feshbach molecules, showing that in the limit of a sudden jump the shape of the spectrum of dissociated atoms can act as a probe of the zero-energy resonance. For some resonances, such jumps are within reach of current experiments. We also study the intermediate region between sudden jumps and asymptotically wide, linear ramps. It is shown from a precise derivation how the latter limit leads to a universal spectrum with a shape independent of the implementation of the two-body physics, provided that the near-resonant scattering properties are correctly modelled. We then turn to the dynamics of Feshbach molecule production from thermal and condensed gases. Our microscopic quantum dynamics approach includes the exact twobody evolution as an input to the many-body calculations. We show that in the long-time limit, and the Markov limit for the interactions, the non-Markovian Boltzmann equation (NMBE) we derive for the one-body density matrix reduces to the normal Boltzmann equation. In the limit of short times and small depletion of the atomic gas, the molecule production efficiency can be calculated by thermally averaging the two-body transition probability density. This thermal averaging technique is applied to studies of the formation of Feshbach molecules using a magnetic field modulation that is near-resonant with the molecular bound state energy. The continuum is shown to have a significant effect on both the dynamics and efficiency of this process. We examine the dependence of the molecule production efficiency on the duration, amplitude and frequency of the modulation, as well as the temperature and density of the gas. This method of producing molecules is effective for a wide range of bound state energies, but requires sufficient variation of the two-body energy levels with magnetic field. Lastly, we implement the NMBE for the case of a fast linear ramp across a Feshbach resonance. The solution of this equation is made feasible by including a large part of the required computation in the kernel, which is calculated in advance. The NMBE allows predictions of the molecule production efficiency which go beyond the thermal averaging technique by accounting for the depletion and rethermalisation of the continuum. In the limit of small depletions, the two approaches give the same results. As the depletion increases, the two approaches differ due to many-body effects limiting the maximum possible molecule production efficiency. We have observed this in our simulations by considering higher-density gases. We have therefore shown the suitability and practicability of this beyond mean-field approach for application to further problems in the production of Feshbach molecules from ultracold gases.

Gas wells suffer a decrease in productivity because of the formation of a liquid hydrocarbon “condensate” in the near wellbore area. This "condensate" forms near producing wells when the flowing pressure is below the reservoir fluid's dew point. Several methods have been shown to temporarily alleviate this problem, but eventually the condensate bank reforms and the productivity again decreases. The use of surfactants to alter the near wellbore wettability to neutral wetting is a potential longer term solution to liquid blocking in these reservoirs. This alteration increases the gas and liquid relative permeabilities and thereby the productivity by reducing the residual liquid saturation. This enhancement allows the accumulated liquid to flow and is durable as long as the wettability alteration is persistent. This solution has been shown to be successful through core flood experiments and field trials in high permeability sandstones, but no improvements had been observed in low permeability cores. As the global demand for energy increases, the petroleum industry has begun to develop unconventional (low permeability) assets, new techniques are needed to maintain and improve their productivity. Liquid blocking in these wells can have a much larger impact on both the gas and condensate production in such low permeability formations. Applying this technique increases both gas and condensate mobility and should increase the economic producing life of these wells. Core flood experiments were conducted to investigate the ability of a chemical treatment to alter the wettability of low permeability sandstones. Previous experimentation did not find any improvement because the increased capillary forces prevented the treatment solution from being easily displaced. This concealed the benefit achieved when the wettability was altered. These experiments recorded smaller relative permeability increases compared to higher permeability core floods, so super critical carbon dioxide was tested as an alternative solvent. While the new treatment was more injectable, it was not as successful at altering wettability. Progress has been made on a solution to liquid blocking in low permeability sandstones, but additional research needs to be completed to further optimize this method. / text

We obtain the characteristic relaxation rates and relaxation modes of a Bose gas in three regimes. The classical regime corresponds to a classical gas of hard spheres and the quantum regime corresponds to an interacting quantum Bose gas with no Bose-Einstein condensate present. In the condensed regime a Bose-Einstein condensate is present and modifies the behavior of the gas. In each regime there is a different kinetic equation that describes the evolution of the relevant distribution function. The classical kinetic equation is the Boltzmann equation and the quantum kinetic equation with no condensate present is the Uehling-Uhlenbeck equation. When a condensate is present, we derive a new kinetic equation that describes the evolution of the momentum distribution of Bogoliubov excitations or bogolons. For each of the three kinetic equations, we linearize the collision integral and use it to generate the elements of a collision matrix. The eigenvalues of this matrix give us the characteristic relaxation rates and the eigenvectors give us the relaxation modes. We report numerical results for the eigenvalues in each regime as the particle species, density and temperature of the gas are varied. / text