Dynamic Critical Phenomena in Trapped Bose Gases

Nonlinear dynamics of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate, subject to the action of a resonant external field, is studied. This field produces a spatio-temporal modulation of the trapping potential with the frequency close to the transition frequency between the ground state and a higher energy level. The evolution equations of fractional populations display a kind of critical phenomena at a critical line on the manifold of the system parameters. It is demonstrated that there exists a direct analogy between dynamical instability at this line and critical phenomena at a critical line of a related averaged system.