Flow of a weakly-interacting Bose condensate

Summary form only given.The experimental observation of Bose condensation using magnetically trapped alkali vapours has stimulated considerable interest in the understanding of weakly-interacting Bose fluids. Experiments have confirmed that the Gross-Pitaevskii equation gives an accurate description of condensate dynamics in the limit T/spl rarr/0, and that the principal effect of finite temperature is condensate depletion. We solve the two-dimensional time-dependent, Gross-Pitaevskii equation, including the effect of gravity, to simulate the flow of a weakly-interacting condensate. We have modeled the output coupling of an atom laser, and the flow of a condensate through a constriction.