Parametric Resonance in Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract: We demonstrate parametric resonance in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with attractive two-body interaction in a harmonic trap under parametric excitation by periodic modulation of the s-wave scattering length. We obtain nonlinear equations of motion for the widths of the condensate using a Gaussian variational ansatz for the Gross-Pitaevskii condensate wave function. We conduct both linear and nonlinear stability analyses for the equations of motion and find qualitative agreement, thus concluding that the stability of two equilibrium widths of a BEC might be inverted by parametric excitation.