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arXiv:0811.1921 · Physical Review A

Symmetry-breaking and symmetry-restoring dynamics of a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in a double well

Indubala I. Satija, Radha Balakrishnan, Phillip Naudus, Jeffrey Heward, Mark Edwards, Charles W. Clark

Published Mar 16, 2009• 74 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the coherent nonlinear tunneling dynamics of a binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in a double-well potential. We demonstrate the existence of a type of mode associated with the ``swapping'' of the two species in the two wells of the potential. In contrast to the symmetry-breaking macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST) solutions, the swapping modes correspond to the tunneling dynamics that preserves the symmetry of the double-well potential. As a consequence of two distinct types of broken-symmetry MQST phases where the two species localize in different potential wells or coexist in the same well, the corresponding symmetry-restoring swapping modes result in dynamics where the two species either avoid or chase each other. In view of the possibility to control the interaction between the species, the binary mixture offers a very robust system to observe these novel effects as well as the phenomena of Josephson oscillations and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ modes.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.79.033616

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We study the coherent nonlinear tunneling dynamics of a binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in a double-well potential. We demonstrate the existence of a type of mode associated with the ``swapping'' of the two species in the two wells of the potential. In contrast to the symmetry-breaking macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST) solutions, the swapping modes correspond to the tunneling dynamics that preserves the symmetry of the double-well potential. As a consequence of two distinct types of broken-symmetry MQST phases where the two species localize in different potential wells or coexist in the same well, the corresponding symmetry-restoring swapping modes result in dynamics where the two species either avoid or chase each other. In view of the possibility to control the interaction between the species, the binary mixture offers a very robust system to observe these novel effects as well as the phenomena of Josephson oscillations and \ensuremathπ\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremathπ modes.
In a double-well potential, a Bose-Einstein condensate exhibits Josephson oscillations or self-trapping, depending on its initial preparation and on the ratio of interparticle interaction to interwell tunneling. Here, we elucidate the role of the exchange symmetry for the dynamics with a mixture of two distinguishable species with identical physical properties, that is, which are governed by an isospecific interaction and external potential. In the mean-field limit, the spatial population imbalance of the mixture can be described by the dynamics of a single species in an effective potential with modified properties or, equivalently, with an effective total particle number. The oscillation behavior can be tuned by populating the second species while maintaining the spatial population imbalance and all other parameters constant. In the corresponding many-body approach, the single-species description approximates the full counting statistics well also outside the realm of spin-coherent states. The method is extended to general Bose-Hubbard systems and to their classical mean-field limits, which suggests an effective single-species description of multicomponent Bose gases with weakly an-isospecific interactions.
The Josephson effect can be observed in a Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential, which is attributed to the tunneling of bosons between two wells. We propose a multi-mode theory to investigate the dynamics of local excitations in a one-dimensional condensate in a double-well potential. We show that the system can be described by two independent two-mode models. The Josephson oscillation and the self-trapping of local collective excitations are predicted analytically and confirmed by numerical simulation.
Macroscopic quantum tunneling of Bose-Einstein Condensate in a double-well potential is discussed in the frame of an experimentally realizable Hamiltonian with ϕ 6 interaction under the two-mode approximation. Concentrating on a special case Δ E = Λ = 0, we analyze the stationary states and dynamics of the system to find that such system possesses very small phase spaces for Josephson oscillation and usually lies in the macroscopic quantum self-trapping state (MQST). Importantly we obtain three kinds of MQSTs and in terms of them show the phase diagrams of the system.
The coherent nonlinear tunneling dynamics of a boson-fermion mixture in a double-well potential is studied in this paper. Four types of phase are found for the mixture. The first one is two species localizing in different potential wells. The second one is two species coexisting in the same well. The third one is two species equally populated in two wells. The fourth one is one species equally populated in two wells while the other species is in one well. The phase transitions among these four states have been investigated. The interspecies and intraspecies interactions as well as bosonic and fermionic numbers can dramatically affect these phase transitions.
Josephson effect of Bose-Einstein condensate in double-well potential is an obvious manifestation of macroscopic quantum coherence. Most of researches focus on the symmetric double-well potential. In this work, we investigate the dynamic of Bose-Einstein condensates in an asymmetric double-well potential by using two-mode theory and computer simulation. In the absence of the interaction between atoms, the dynamic equation of condensate can be solved analytically. The amplitude as a function of energy difference of two wells is obtained. We can find that the change of energy difference will lead to the different dynamic behaviors of condensate. If the energy difference is relatively large, the condensate will primarily occupy the well that is occupied more than the other well at the beginning time. It is interesting that such a trap phenomenon is not dependent on the position of the high energy potential well nor the position of low energy potential well. If the energy difference becomes small, the tunneling and oscillation of condensate will be enhanced. When the interaction between atoms is present, our numerical calculations show that as the nonlinear interaction increases, the dynamic behavior of condensate exhibits different characteristics, such as trapping in a well, enhancing the tunneling and oscillation between two wells, and enhancing the trapping in a well at large nonlinear interaction, which is similar to the dynamic change caused by the energy difference in the case of ideal condensate. That is to say, on the one hand, the nonlinear interaction can lead to the trap of condensate as well as the dynamic trap to happen in symmetric double-well potential. On the other hand, the nonlinearity can promote the tunneling of condensate, counteracting the effect of the asymmetry of potential. And, this counteracting effect is related to the difference in energy between asymmetric potential wells. To understand the underlying mechanism, the full dynamic behavior of two-mode model is illustrated and the dynamic transition can be seen clearly. Combining the results obtained with and without interaction, regarding nonlinear interaction as effective potential provides a clear way to explain dynamic transition of condensate in an asymmetric double-well potential. In addition, we also perform the numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, and the results are consistent with the conclusions obtained by using the two-mode theory.
In this paper, we study the interaction-modulated tunneling dynamics of a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture, where a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with weak repulsive interaction is confined in a symmetric deep double-well potential and an equally populated two-component Fermi gas in a harmonic potential symmetrically is positioned in the center of the double-well potential. The tunneling between the two wells is modulated by fermions trapped in a harmonic potential. When the temperature is adequately low and the bosonic particle number is adequately large, we can employ the mean-field theory to describe the evolution of the BEC in the double-well potential through the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For the Fermi gas in the harmonic potential trap, we consider the case where the inter-fermion interaction is tuned on the deep Bose-Einstein condensate of the inter-fermion Feshbach resonance, where two fermions of spin-up and spin-down form a two-body bound state. Within the regime, the Fermi gas is well described by a condensate of these fermionic dimers, and hence can be simulated as well by a Gross-Pitaevskii equation of dimers. The inter-species interactions couple the dynamics of the two species, which results in interesting features in the tunneling oscillations. The dynamic equations of the BEC in the double-well potential is described by a two-mode approximation. Coupling it with time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation of the harmonically potential trapped molecular BEC, we numerically investigate the dynamical evolution of the Boson-Fermi hybrid system under different initial conditions. It is found that the interaction among fermions in a harmonic potential leads to strong non-linearity in the oscillations of the bosons in the double-well potential and enriches the tunneling dynamics of the bosons. Especially, it strengthens macroscopic quantum self-trapping. And the macroscopic quantum self-trapping can be expressed in three forms: the phase tends to be negative and monotonically decreases with time, the phase evolves with time, and the phase tends to be positive and increases monotonically with time. This means that it is possible the tunneling dynamics of the BEC in double-well potential is adjustable. Our results can be verified experimentally in a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture by varying different interaction parameters via Feshbach resonance and confinement-induced resonance.