Experimental characterization of wet-bed dam-breaks in channel-geometry Bose-Einstein condensates

Dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates serve as ideal platforms for engineering quantum analogs, allowing for the simulation of complex dynamics within a highly tunable, controlled environment. Starting from our previous work which fully characterized rarefaction flow following a "dry-bed" dam-break, this work explores "wet-bed" dam-break dynamics, where atoms flow into a non-zero background density. Here, a very different phenomenology is observed: intriguingly, prewetting of the channel leads to the emergence of localized turbulent dynamics within the channel. We present new analysis on this data and quantify the rate of turbulent growth and its dependence on initial experimental conditions. This work demonstrates a new setting for the study of localized channel turbulence in a quantum system.