Thermally activated local collapse of a flattened dipolar condensate

We consider the metastable dynamics of a flattened dipolar condensate. We develop an analytic model that quantifies the energy barrier to the system undergoing local collapse to form a density spike. We also develop a stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii equation theory for a flattened dipolar condensate, which we use to perform finite-temperature simulations verifying the local collapse scenario. We predict that local collapses play a significant role in the regime where rotons are predicted to exist and will be an important consideration for experiments looking to detect these excitations.