Density fluctuations in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose gas as observed in free expansion

Abstract

We study, within a framework of the classical fields approximation, the density correlations of a weakly interacting expanding Bose gas for the whole range of temperatures across the Bose-Einstein condensation threshold. We focus on elongated quasi-one-dimensional systems where there is a huge discrepancy between the existing theory and experimental results (A. Perrin et al., Nature Phys. 8, 195 (2012)). We find that the density correlation function is not reduced for temperatures below the critical one as it is predicted for the ideal gas or for a weakly interacting system within the Bogoliubov approximation. This behavior of the density correlations agrees with the above mentioned experiment with the elongated system. Although the system was much larger then studied here we believe that the behavior of the density correlation function found there is quite generic. Our theoretical studies indicate also large density fluctuations in the trap in the quasicondensate regime where only phase fluctuations were expected. We argue that the enhanced density fluctuations can originate in the presence of interactions in the system, or more precisely in the existence of spontaneous dark solitons in the elongated gas at thermal equilibrium.