Inhibition of Coherence in Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

We analyze the dependence of the collapse and revival of many-atom coherence of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate on the trap potential, dimensionality of the gas, and atom number fluctuations. We show that in a class of experimentally relevant systems the collapse time vanishes in the limit of a large number of atoms, implying that the trapped Bose gas cannot sustain a well-defined quantum phase.