Bose-Einstein condensation dynamics in three dimensions by the pseudospectral and finite-difference methods

Abstract

We suggest a pseudospectral method for solving the three-dimensional time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation, and use it to study the resonance dynamics of a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate induced by a periodic variation in the atomic scattering length. When the frequency of oscillation of the scattering length is an even multiple of one of the trapping frequencies along the x, y or z direction, the corresponding size of the condensate executes resonant oscillation. Using the concept of the differentiation matrix, the partial-differential GP equation is reduced to a set of coupled ordinary differential equations, which is solved by a fourth-order adaptive step-size control Runge–Kutta method. The pseudospectral method is contrasted with the finite-difference method for the same problem, where the time evolution is performed by the Crank–Nicholson algorithm. The latter method is illustrated to be more suitable for a three-dimensional standing-wave optical-lattice trapping potential.