Landau and Dynamical Instabilities of the Superflow of Bose-Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices

The superfluidity of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices are investigated. Apart from the usual Landau instability which occurs when a BEC flows faster than the speed of sound, the BEC can also suffer a dynamical instability, resulting in period doubling and other sorts of symmetry breaking of the system. Such an instability may play a crucial role in the dissipative motion of a trapped BEC in an optical lattice recently observed [1].