Monday, April 23, 2012

1204.4670 (F. Briscese et al.)

Planck-scale effects on Bose-Einstein condensates    [PDF]

F. Briscese, M. Grether, M. de Llano
The effects of a Planck-scale deformation of the Minkowski energy-momentum dispersion relation on the phenomenology of non-trapped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) are examined. Such a deformation is shown to cause a shift in the condensation temperature $T_{c}$ of the BEC and, for a specific functional form of deformation, this shift can be as large as the current measured precision on $T_{c}$. For a $_{37}^{85}Rb$ cold-atom BEC with a particle density $n\simeq 10^{12}cm^{-3}$ we find a fractional shift of order $10^{-4}$, but this can be much larger for even more dilute BECs. We discuss the possibility of planning specific experiments with BECs that might provide phenomenological constraints on Planck-scale physics. These corrections to $T_{c}$ are found to be extremely small for ultrarelativistic BECs implying that, in some cases, Planck-scale effects may be more important in low- rather than high-energy processes. Lastly, it is suggested that new dark matter models relying on BECs may also be useful in principle for quantum-gravity phenomenology.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4670

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