The many-body Schr\"odinger dynamics of a one-dimensional bosonic Josephson junction is investigated for up to 10 000 bosons and long times. The initial states are fully condensed and the interaction strength is weak. We report on a universal fragmentation dynamics on the many-body level: systems consisting of different numbers of particles fragment to the same value at constant mean-field interaction strength. The phenomenon manifests itself in observables such as the correlation functions of the system. We explain this universal fragmentation dynamics analytically based on the Bose-Hubbard model. We thereby show that the extent to which many-body effects become important at later times depends crucially on the initial state. Even for arbitrarily large particle numbers and arbitrarily weak interaction strength the dynamics is many-body in nature and the fragmentation universal. There is no weakly interacting limit where the Gross-Pitaevskii mean field is valid for long times.
The many-body Schr"odinger dynamics of a one-dimensional bosonic Josephson junction is investigated for up to 10 000 bosons and long times. The initial states are fully condensed and the interaction strength is weak. We report on a universal fragmentation dynamics on the many-body level: systems consisting of different numbers of particles fragment to the same value at constant mean-field interaction strength. The phenomenon manifests itself in observables such as the correlation functions of the system. We explain this universal fragmentation dynamics analytically based on the Bose-Hubbard model. We thereby show that the extent to which many-body effects become important at later times depends crucially on the initial state. Even for arbitrarily large particle numbers and arbitrarily weak interaction strength the dynamics is many-body in nature and the fragmentation universal. There is no weakly interacting limit where the Gross-Pitaevskii mean field is valid for long times.
Abstract The out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics of an interacting Bose gas trapped in a one-dimensional asymmetric double-well potential is studied by solving the many-body Schrödinger equation numerically accurately. We examine how the gradual loss of symmetry of the confining trap affects the macroscopic quantum tunneling dynamics of the system between the two wells. In an asymmetric double well, the two wells are not equivalent anymore, say, the left well is deeper than the right one. Accordingly, we analyze the dynamics by initially preparing the condensate in both the left and the right wells. The dynamics of the system is characterized by the time evolution of a few physical quantities of increasing many-body complexity, namely, the survival probability, depletion and fragmentation, and the many-particle position and momentum variances. In particular, we have examined the frequencies and amplitudes of the oscillations of the survival probabilities, the time scale for the development of fragmentation and its degree, and the growth and oscillatory behavior of the many-particle position and momentum variances. There is an overall suppression of the oscillations of the survival probabilities in an asymmetric double well, except for resonant values of asymmetry for which the one-body ground state energy in the right well matches with one of the one-body excited states in the left well, thereby resulting in resonantly enhanced tunneling from the right well ground state. Overall, depending on whether the condensate is initially prepared in the left or right well, the repulsive inter-atomic interactions affect the survival probabilities differently. For a sufficiently strong repulsive interaction, the system is found to become fragmented. The degree of fragmentation depends both on the asymmetry of the trap and the initial well in which the condensate is prepared in a non-trivial manner. Furthermore, we show that the phenomenon of resonantly enhanced tunneling can be accompanied by a large degree of fragmentation (depletion) for the strong (weak) interaction. The many-particle position and momentum variances follow the density oscillations of the system in the asymmetric double well and bears prominent signatures of the degree of depletion or fragmentation, depending on the strength of the interactions. These quantities further exhibit a fine structure signifying a breathing-mode oscillation. Finally, a universality of fragmentation for systems made of different numbers of particles but the same interaction parameter is also found and its dependence on the asymmetry is investigated. The phenomenon is robust despite the asymmetry of the junction and admits a macroscopically-large fragmented condensate characterized by a diverging many-particle position variance. This is as far as one can get from the dynamics of the density in the junction.
The occupation of more than one single-particle state, and hence the emergence of fragmentation, is a many-body phenomenon occurring for systems of spatially confined strongly interacting bosons. In the present study, we investigate the effect of the range of the interparticle interactions on the fragmentation degree of one- and two-dimensional systems in single wells. We solve the full many-body Schr\"odinger equation of the system using the recursive implementation of the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons method (R-MCTDHB). The dependence of the degree of fragmentation on dimensionality, particle number, areal or line density, and interaction strength is assessed. For contact interactions, it is found that the fragmentation is essentially density independent in two dimensions. However, fragmentation increasingly depends on density the more long ranged the interactions become. At fixed particle number N, the degree of fragmentation is increasing when the density is decreasing, as expected in one spatial dimension. We demonstrate that this, nontrivially, remains true also for long-range interactions in two spatial dimensions. We, finally, find that fragmentation in a single well is a mesoscopic phenomenon: Within our fully self-consistent approach, the degree of fragmentation, to a good approximation, decreases universally as ${N}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ when only N is varied.
Understanding how coherent quantum dynamics give way to correlation-dominated behavior in low-dimensional systems remains a central challenge in quantum many-body physics. Here, we investigate a one-dimensional Bose-Josephson junction confined in a box trap using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). By varying the interaction strength and initial population imbalance, we identify distinct dynamical regimes governed by the competition between coherence and correlation-induced fragmentation. Weak interactions support coherent Josephson oscillations, whereas increasing imbalance leads to damping. At intermediate interaction strength, varying only the initial imbalance induces a crossover from nearly pure coherent oscillations to many-body dephasing with collapse-and-revival dynamics, and ultimately to equilibration accompanied by strong fragmentation and the saturation of many-body observables. In the strongly interacting regime, the system enters a dynamical freezing regime characterized by pronounced fragmentation, well-separated particle-resolved density peaks, and strongly suppressed tunneling. A systematic comparison with the Bose-Hubbard model reveals excellent agreement in the weakly interacting regime, while progressively larger deviations emerge as higher-orbital occupations beyond the two-mode approximation become significant. These results provide a unified picture of the emergence and competition of coherence, many-body dephasing, equilibration, and dynamical freezing, while delineating the regime of validity of the Bose-Hubbard description.
In this thesis, the physics of trapped, interacting Bose-Einstein condensates is analyzed by solving the many-body Schrödinger equation. Particular emphasis is put on coherence, fragmentation and reduced density matrices. First, the ground state of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate and its correlation functions are obtained. Then the dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction is investigated by solving the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation numerically exactly. These are the first exact results in literature in this context. It is shown that the standard approximations of the field, Gross-Pitaevskii theory and the Bose-Hubbard model fail at weak interaction strength and within their range of expected validity. For stronger interactions the dynamics becomes strongly correlated and a new equilibration phenomenon is discovered. By comparison with exact results it is shown that a symmetry of the Bose-Hubbard model between attractive and repulsive interactions must be considered an artefact of the model. A conceptual innovation of this thesis are time-dependent Wannier functions. Equations of motion for time-dependent Wannier functions are derived from the variational principle. By comparison with exact results it is shown that lattice models can be greatly improved at little computational cost by letting the Wannier functions of a lattice model become time-dependent.
Abstract The dynamics of bosons in Josephson junctions have drawn much attention where the bosons are initially condensed. When interacting bosons tunnel back and forth along the junction, depletion and, eventually, fragmentation develop. Here, we pose the question how do fragmented bosons tunnel in a bosonic Josephson junction? To this end, we exploit the transverse degree-of-freedom of the junction to encode initial fragmentation to the bosonic cloud. We find rich many-body dynamics, which includes the speed up of the collapse of density oscillations and slow down of the revival process, by analyzing the survival probability along the junction, fluctuations of particle positions across the junction, and the occupancy of the lowest single-particle states. It is found that a fully fragmented state significantly accelerates the revival process compared to the conventional Bose–Einstein condensate. To explain the underlying many-body mechanism, we show that the initial fragmentation in the transverse direction interferes with the development of fragmentation in time along the junction. The magnitude of this interference is quantified by the transition from a decrease of occupation to build up of occupation in the first excited single-particle state. The interference mechanism is a purely many-body effect that does not occur in the mean-field dynamics. All in all, we show that the interference of longitudinal and transversal fragmentations leads to new rules for macroscopic tunneling phenomena of interacting bosons in traps.
Abstract Typical treatments of superconducting or superfluid Josephson junctions rely on mean-field or two-mode models; we explore many-body dynamics of an isolated, ultracold, Bose-gas long Josephson junction using time-evolving block decimation simulations. We demonstrate that with increasing repulsive interaction strength, localized dynamics emerge that influence macroscopic condensate behavior and can lead to the formation of solitons that directly oppose the symmetry of the junction. Initial state population and phase yield insight into dynamic tunneling regimes of a quasi one-dimensional double well potential, from Josephson oscillations to macroscopic-self-trapping. Population imbalance simulations reveal substantial deviation of many-body dynamics from mean-field Gross–Pitaevskii predictions, particularly as the barrier height and interaction strength increase. In addition, the sudden approximation supports localized particle–hole formation after a diabatic quench, and correlation measures unveil a new dynamic regime: the Fock flashlight.