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arXiv:1209.1452

Degenerate ground state and quantum tunneling in rotating condensates

Qiang Du, Martine Le Berre, Yves Pomeau A

Published Sep 7, 2012• 0 citations
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Abstract

Quantum tunneling introduces a fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics. Whenever the classical ground state is non-unique (degenerate), quantum mechanics restore uniqueness thanks to tunneling. A condensate in a rotating trap with a vortex can have such a degenerate classical ground state, a degeneracy that is excluded in the absence of rotation at least when the Gross-Pitaevskii equation applies. If the rotating trap has a center of symmetry, like a figure eight (a peanut), the vortex may be on either side with the same energy yielding a degenerate ground state, a degeneracy lifted by quantum tunneling. We explain how to compute the rate of tunneling in the WKB limit by estimating the action of the trajectory in the Euclidean version of the dynamics.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1209.1452

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Quantum tunneling introduces a fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics. Whenever the classical ground state is non-unique (degenerate), quantum mechanics restore uniqueness thanks to tunneling. A condensate in a rotating trap with a vortex can have such a degenerate classical ground state, a degeneracy that is excluded in the absence of rotation at least when the Gross-Pitaevskii equation applies. If the rotating trap has a center of symmetry, like a figure eight (a peanut), the vortex may be on either side with the same energy yielding a degenerate ground state, a degeneracy lifted by quantum tunneling. We explain how to compute the rate of tunneling in the WKB limit by estimating the action of the trajectory in the Euclidean version of the dynamics.
By numerically solving the single-particle stationary Schrödinger equation and the Gross-Pitaevskii equation with mean-field interactions at zero temperature, the ground state properties of the rotating spin-orbital-angular-momentum coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in a harmonic trapping potential are investigated in this work. The results show that the rotation lifts the double degeneracy of the single-particle energy spectrum in the angular momentum space, and leads to the vortex state. The angular momentum of the vortex depends on the rotating frequency, the intensity of the laser beam, and the spin-orbital-angular-momentum coupling. In particular, if the rotating frequency is below a critical value, the angular momentum of the ground state vortex remains unaffected by the rotating frequency. When the rotating frequency exceeds the critical value, the angular momentum of the ground state vortex will increase with the rotating frequency increasing. By assuming that the system is confined in a ring trap, the expression of the single-particle energy spectrum in the angular momentum space can be obtained, which clarifies how the rotation frequency affects the angular momentum of the ground state. In the presence of atomic interactions, similar phenomena can also be observed in the mean-field ground state at zero temperature.
We study the lowest energy states of a weakly interacting trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in both quantum and classical cases. An analytic expression for the ground-state wavefunction of a rotating Gross-Pitaevskii condensate of trapped atoms describes the onset of vorticity in an accelerated trap, starting from the vortex entry followed by formation of growing symmetric Wigner molecules. Within a unified picture, it explains the staircase of the angular momentum jumps and the behavior of the bosonic occupancies observed in numerical and variational studies. The similarity of this behavior and mesoscopic superconductors is discussed.
We study ground, symmetric and central vortex states, as well as their energy and chemical potential diagrams, in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) analytically and numerically.We start from the three-dimensional (3D) Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) with an angular momentum rotation term, scale it to obtain a four-parameter model, reduce it to a 2D GPE in the limiting regime of strong anisotropic confinement and present its semiclassical scaling and geometrical optics.We discuss the existence/nonexistence problem for ground states (depending on the angular velocity) and find that symmetric and central vortex states are independent of the angular rotational momentum.We perform numerical experiments computing these states using a continuous normalized gradient flow (CNGF) method with a backward Euler finite difference (BEFD) discretization.Ground, symmetric and central vortex states, as well as their energy configurations, are reported in 2D and 3D for a rotating BEC.Through our numerical study, we find various configurations with several vortices in both 2D and 3D structures, energy asymptotics in some limiting regimes and ratios between energies of different states in a strong replusive interaction regime.Finally we report the critical angular velocity at which the ground state loses symmetry, numerical verification of dimension reduction from 3D to 2D, errors for the Thomas-Fermi approximation, and spourous numerical ground states when the rotation speed is larger than the minimal trapping frequency in the xy plane.
The ground state of Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive particle interactions is metastable. One of the decay mechanisms of the condensate is a collapse by macroscopic quantum tunneling, which can be described by the bounce trajectory as a solution of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation in imaginary time. For condensates with an electromagnetically induced gravity-like interaction, the bounce trajectory is computed with an extended variational approach using coupled Gaussian functions and is simulated numerically exact within the mean-field approach on a spacetime lattice. It is shown that the variational computations converge very rapidly to the numerically exact result with increasing number of Gaussians. The tunneling rate of the condensate is obtained from the classical action and additional parameters of the bounce trajectory. The converged variational and numerically exact results drastically improve by several orders of magnitude the decay rates obtained previously with a simple variational approach using a single Gaussian-type orbital for the condensate wave function.
This thesis contains theoretical studies of weakly interacting, trapped Bose-Einstein condensed gases. The main emphasis is on the rotational properties of these systems. A typical Bose-Einstein condensate reacts to external rotation by forming singly quantized vortices. By the word ”typical” we refer to a condensate with repulsive interparticle interactions and with a frozen spin degree of freedom. However, there are some atomic species for which the low-energy interactions are attractive. Moreover, the tuning of different condensate properties is relatively easy. For example, there are ways to experimentally change the effective interaction from repulsive to attractive. For an attractively interacting condensate the vortex is not the only possible rotational state but the sample may also experience rotation through its center of mass. In the first part of the thesis, we analyze some properties of a rotating attractive Bose gas at the zero temperature limit. First, we note that in order to maintain energetical stability, the gas has to be rotated in an external trap which is steeper than a harmonic trap. We study the system in an anharmonic quadratic + quartic potential. The rotating ground state phase-space is determined with analytical and numerical methods. If the interactions are strong enough, the rotating ground state appears to be a state with the rotating center of mass. On the other hand, at the limit of weak interactions the system experiences rotation by forming a multiply quantized vortex. We also determine the spectrum of elementary excitations for these quantum many-particle states. We find that the broken symmetry of the center of mass rotating state induces an additional zero-energy (Goldstone) mode and that the small oscillations of the ground state exhibit the decoupling between the center of mass and relative motions. If the spin of the atoms is allowed to change freely, a rich variety of topological excitations in condensates can be studied. External rotation is one of the tools for examining the excitations in spinor condensates. In a spinless scalar condensate the appearance of a quantized vortex is manifested by the vortex line in which the condensate density vanishes. In the plane perpendicular to the vortex line, one speaks of the vortex core for the density minimum. We study the properties of slowly rotated F = 1 spinor condensates and show that for ferromagnetic interactions the ground state is a coreless vortex. While the individual spin components may carry ordinary vortices the overall density of the system is coreless. We also study a method to create a point-like monopole structure in a ferromagnetic condensate by suitably imprinting vortices and solitons for different spin components of the condensate.