Roton spectroscopy in a harmonically trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We study a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate with dipole-dipole interactions in a regime where a roton spectrum emerges. We show that the roton spectrum is clearly revealed in the static and dynamic structure factors which can be measured using Bragg spectroscopy. We develop and validate a theory based on the local-density approximation for the dynamic structure factor. © 2012 American Physical Society.