Mainz 2026 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 26: Poster – Ultracold Matter (joint session Q/A)
A 26.5: Poster
Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 17:00–19:00, Philo 2. OG
The Slox Trap: Absorptive Boundaries for Infinitely Extended Physics — •Nikolas Liebster1, 2, Jelte Duchene1, Elinor Kath1, Hanyi Jang1, Helmut Strobel1, and Markus Oberthaler1 — 1Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 227, 69120, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Schellingstr. 4, 80799 Munich, Germany
A common impediment to the comparison between theoretical models and experimental results is finite size effects, which are an experimental reality but a theoretical challenge. One solution is periodic boundaries, which can be implemented experimentally by embedding a D-dimensional system in a D+1-dimensional space (e.g. a torus), but this can be challenging and introduces curvature. An alternative approach is to implement absorptive boundaries, such that reflections and pinning of excitations is avoided, and dynamics in the bulk mimic an infinitely extended system. Here, we experimentally investigate boundary effects in a slanted box, i.e. slox potential, which is homogeneous in the center and rises linearly at the boundary. We compare dynamics in slox and standard box traps, by studying wavepacket dynamics and reflections of high-momentum modes at the boundary. We show that the slox effectively absorbs excitations above a certain momentum-scale, which can be described in terms of finite-temperature dynamics, where damping locally increases at the boundary due to the inhomogeneous (thermal) density distribution.
Keywords: Superfluids; Bose-Einstein Condensates; Finite Temperature; Boundary Effects