In this paper we study a fast adiabatic-like expansion of a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in the Thomas-Fermi regime confined in a harmonic potential, using the theory of time-optimal control. We find that under reasonable assumptions suggested by the experimental setup, the minimum-time expansion occurs when the frequency of the potential changes in a bang-bang form between the permitted values. We calculate the necessary expansion time and compare it with that obtained using the state-of-the-art inverse engineering method under the same constraints. We also show that this minimum time scales logarithmically with the expansion factor for large values of the latter. This work is expected to find applications in areas where efficient manipulation of a BEC is of utmost importance, for example, in atom interferometry with a BEC.

• Received 6 June 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.063602