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arXiv:1112.3816 · Physical Review A

Quantum criticality in a bosonic Josephson junction

Pierfrancesco Buonsante, Raffaella Burioni, Edoardo Vescovi, A. Vezzani

Published Apr 27, 2012• 40 citations
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Abstract

In this paper we consider a bosonic Josephson junction described by a two-mode Bose-Hubbard model, and we thoroughly analyze a quantum phase transition occurring in the system in the limit of infinite bosonic population. We discuss the relation between this quantum phase transition and the dynamical bifurcation occurring in the spectrum of the discrete self-trapping equations describing the system at the semiclassical level. In particular, we identify five regimes depending on the strength of the effective interaction among bosons, and study the finite-size effects arising from the finiteness of the bosonic population. We devote special attention to the critical regime which reduces to the dynamical bifurcation point in the thermodynamic limit of infinite bosonic population. Specifically, we highlight an anomalous scaling in the population imbalance between the two wells of the trapping potential, as well as in two quantities borrowed from quantum information theory, i.e., the entropy of entanglement and the ground-state fidelity. Our analysis is not limited to the zero-temperature case, but considers thermal effects as well.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.85.043625

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In this paper we consider a bosonic Josephson junction described by a two-mode Bose-Hubbard model, and we thoroughly analyze a quantum phase transition occurring in the system in the limit of infinite bosonic population. We discuss the relation between this quantum phase transition and the dynamical bifurcation occurring in the spectrum of the discrete self-trapping equations describing the system at the semiclassical level. In particular, we identify five regimes depending on the strength of the effective interaction among bosons, and study the finite-size effects arising from the finiteness of the bosonic population. We devote special attention to the critical regime which reduces to the dynamical bifurcation point in the thermodynamic limit of infinite bosonic population. Specifically, we highlight an anomalous scaling in the population imbalance between the two wells of the trapping potential, as well as in two quantities borrowed from quantum information theory, i.e., the entropy of entanglement and the ground-state fidelity. Our analysis is not limited to the zero-temperature case, but considers thermal effects as well.
We investigate the finite-temperature properties of a bosonic Josephson junction composed of N interacting atoms confined by a quasi-one-dimensional asymmetric double-well potential, modeled by the two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. We compute numerically the spectral decomposition of the statistical ensemble of states, the thermodynamic and entanglement entropies, the population imbalance, the quantum Fisher information, and the coherence visibility. We analyze their dependence on the system parameters, showing in particular how finite temperature and on-site energy asymmetry affect the entanglement and coherence properties of the system. Moreover, starting from a quantum phase model which accurately describes the system over a wide range of interactions, we develop a reliable description of the strong tunneling regime, where thermal averages may be computed analytically using a modified Boltzmann weight involving an effective temperature. We discuss the possibility of applying this effective description to other models in suitable regimes.
We illustrate how dynamical transitions in nonlinear semiclassical models can be recognized as phase transitions in the corresponding---inherently linear---quantum model, where, in a statistical-mechanics framework, the thermodynamic limit is realized by letting the particle population go to infinity at fixed size. We focus on lattice bosons described by the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model and discrete self-trapping (DST) equations at the quantum and semiclassical levels, respectively. After showing that the Gaussianity of the quantum ground states is broken at the phase transition, we evaluate finite-population effects by introducing a suitable scaling hypothesis; we work out the exact value of the critical exponents and provide numerical evidence confirming our hypothesis. Our analytical results rely on a general scheme obtained from a large-population expansion of the eigenvalue equation of the BH model. In this approach the DST equations resurface as solutions of the zeroth-order problem.
We investigate the fully quantum evolution of the population imbalance in a perfectly symmetric Bose-Josephson junction modeled by a two-mode Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, focusing on the validity of macroscopic quantum self-trapping beyond the mean-field theory. We show that for any finite number of particles, the exact quantum dynamics leads to the breakdown of macroscopic quantum self-trapping after a finite time, regardless of the initial state. Using the symmetries of the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we provide a mathematical demonstration of this result and analyze the spectral properties governing the dynamics. We identify a branching behavior in the eigenvalue differences and a nontrivial structure of the population-imbalance amplitudes. These features allow us to distinguish two clearly different dynamical regimes and to elucidate the mechanism leading to the emergence of a quasi–macroscopic quantum self-trapping regime for large particle numbers. These findings bridge the gap between mean-field predictions and exact quantum dynamics and provide insight into the emergence of classical nonlinear behavior from finite quantum many-body systems.
We use the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian to study quantum fluctuations in canonical equilibrium ensembles of bosonic Josephson junctions at relatively high temperatures, comparing the results for finite particle numbers NNN to the classical limit that is attained as NNN approaches infinity. We consider both attractive and repulsive atom-atom interactions, with special focus on the behavior near the T=0T=0T=0 quantum phase transition that occurs, for large enough NNN, when attractive interactions surpass a critical level. Differences between Bose-Hubbard results for small NNN and those of the classical limit are quite small even when $N\ensuremath{\sim}100$, with deviations from the limit diminishing as 1/N1/N1/N.
We investigate finite-size quantum effects in the dynamics of NNN bosonic particles which are tunneling between two sites adopting the two-site Bose-Hubbard model. By using time-dependent atomic coherent states (ACSs) we extend the standard mean-field equations of this bosonic Josephson junction, which are based on time-dependent Glauber coherent states. In this way we find 1/N1/N1/N corrections to familiar mean-field (MF) results: the frequency of macroscopic oscillation between the two sites, the critical parameter for the dynamical macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST), and the attractive critical interaction strength for the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) of the ground state. To validate our analytical results we perform numerical simulations of the quantum dynamics. In the case of Josephson oscillations around a balanced configuration we also find that, for a few atoms, the numerical results are in good agreement with the predictions of time-dependent ACS variational approach, provided that the time evolution is not too long. Also, the numerical results of SSB are better reproduced by the ACS approach than with the MF approach. Instead, the onset of MQST is correctly reproduced by ACS theory only in the large NNN regime and, for this phenomenon, the 1/N1/N1/N correction to the MF formula is not reliable.
We investigate the effect of dissipation in a Bose-Josephson junction (BJJ) coupled to baths of bosons at its two sites. Apart from the dynamical transition due to repulsive interactions, the BJJ undergoes a quantum phase transition by increasing the coupling strength with the bath modes. We analyze this system by mapping to an equivalent spin model coupled to the bosonic modes. The excitation energies and fluctuation of number imbalance are obtained within a Holstein-Primakoff approximation, which exhibits vanishing of the energy gap and enhanced quantum fluctuations at the critical point. We study the dynamics of BJJ using a time-dependent variational method and analyze stability of different types of steady states. As a special case we study in detail the phase space dynamics of BJJ coupled to a single mode, which reveals diffusive and incoherent behavior with increasing coupling to the bath mode. The dynamical steady states corresponding to the π oscillation and self-trapped state become unstable when their oscillation frequencies are in resonance with the bath modes. We study the Josephson dynamics in the presence of an Ohmic bath with Gaussian noise to incorporate the thermal fluctuations and obtain the Josephson oscillation frequency and damping analytically. We also observe the transition to the symmetry-broken state for strong coupling as well as decay of π oscillation and a self-trapped state to the ground state due to dissipation. Variation of the phase fluctuation with temperature of the bath shows similar behavior as observed in experiment. Finally we discuss the experimental setup to study the observable effects of dissipation in BJJ.