We investigate the ground state properties and tunneling dynamics of ultracold dipolar bosons in a one dimensional triple well trap from a few-body ab-initio perspective. Our focus is primarily on the distinctive features of dipolar bosons compared to the contact interacting bosons. Formation of intra-well localization is observed for very strong dipolar interaction. General population rearangement as well as fragmentation and localization effects have been found, depending strongly on the particle number. The energy spectrum for two particles exhibits avoided crossings that lead to several distinct resonances involving different bands, i.e. to an inter-band resonant tunneling dynamics. The corresponding mechanisms are investigated by studying among others the pair-probability and performing an eigenstate analysis.
We investigate the ground state properties and tunneling dynamics of ultracold dipolar bosons in a one dimensional triple well trap from a few-body ab-initio perspective. Our focus is primarily on the distinctive features of dipolar bosons compared to the contact interacting bosons. Formation of intra-well localization is observed for very strong dipolar interaction. General population rearangement as well as fragmentation and localization effects have been found, depending strongly on the particle number. The energy spectrum for two particles exhibits avoided crossings that lead to several distinct resonances involving different bands, i.e. to an inter-band resonant tunneling dynamics. The corresponding mechanisms are investigated by studying among others the pair-probability and performing an eigenstate analysis.
In this thesis, the tunneling dynamics of a few boson system in a double-well is investigated from an ab-initio prospective using the numerically exact Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method. We first study a system consisting of single species of bosons with a spatially modulated interaction. The main emphasis is on the role of inhomogeneity and its effect on the tunneling. The dynamics changes from Rabi oscillations in the non-interacting case to a highly suppressed tunneling for intermediate interaction strengths followed by a reappearance of tunneling near the fermionization limit. With extreme interaction inhomogeneity in the regime of strong correlations we observe tunneling between the higher bands. A richer behavior is found for systems with higher particle number. For systems with more than two bosons, the inhomogeneity of the interaction can be tuned to generate tunneling resonances. These observations are explained on the basis of the few-body spectrum and stationary eigenstates. A tilted double-well and its interplay with the interaction asymmetry is discussed next. We demonstrate that the effects of the interaction can be compensated by the tilt leading to tunneling resonances. We then explore tunneling dynamics of binary bosonic mixtures. The focus is on the role of the inter- and intra-species interactions and their interplay. The dynamics is studied for three initial configurations: complete and partial population imbalance and a phase separated state. Increasing the inter-species interaction leads to a strong increase of the tunneling time period analogous to the quantum self-trapping for condensates. The intra-species repulsion can suppress or enhance the tunneling period depending on the strength of the inter-species correlations as well as the initial configuration. Completely correlated tunneling between the two species and within the same species as well as mechanisms of species separation and counterflow are revealed. These effects are explained by studying the many-body energy spectra as well as the properties of the contributing stationary states.
This thesis studies the one-dimensional Bose gas in harmonic and double-well traps from a few-body perspective. The main emphasis is on the crossover from weak interactions to the fermionization limit of infinite repulsion, where the system maps to an ideal Fermi gas. To explore the structure as well as the quantum dynamics throughout that crossover, we both develop an exact-diagonalization approach and resort to a multi-configurational time-dependent method (MCTDH). The basic mechanism of the fermionization crossover for the ground state is shown to consist in the formation of a correlation hole in the two-body density, which culminates in a localization of the individual particles for strong repulsion. This is accompanied by a reduction of coherence. We demonstrate how the concrete pathway depends on the trap geometry, on the shape of the interaction, as well as on the atom number. By extension, we also investigate the lowest excitations, whose understanding is a base for studying the impact of the fermionization crossover on the tunneling dynamics in a double well. In symmetric wells, a pathway from single-particle to fragmented-pair tunneling shows up. By energetically offsetting the two wells, tunnel resonances become accessible, which may be used to extract single atoms.
In this thesis, we study the physical properties of several ultracold few-boson systems depending on the interactions between their constituents. Nowadays, experimentally, it is possible to have great control with high precision over the geometry and the interactions between the particles, making them an excellent setup to test directly the principles of quantum mechanics. A very interesting point is to study the evolution of their properties with the number of particles. The theoretical study of these systems pretends to microscopically understand the current experimental results and give support to new experimental developments.\n\n\t\t\t\t The method that will be used is the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the system. As we will see, in spite of the attempts to improve it, the method is limited by the fact that, in practice, it is only useful to study few-particle systems. The method has several advantages. First of all, one has access to both the ground and the excited states. In second place, the method is variational and converges to the exact solution as long as the Hilbert space in which we diagonalize is enlarged.\n\t\t\t\t Moreover, since we have access to the states of the system, it is possible to calculate any observable quantity of interest.\n\n\t\t\t\t First, we will study a system of spinless bosons trapped in a two-dimensional harmonic potential. The effect of the trap is to keep the system bound. It will be seen how the presence of a repulsive interaction changes the energy spectrum and other properties of the system. For instance, the density profile, which is usually measurable, and also the two-body distribution function, which is intimately related to the existence of correlations.\n\n\t\t\t\t Afterwards, the focus will be on the particular case of having only two bosons in the system interacting through a strong repulsive force. Inspired by the one-dimensional case where the fermionization phenomenon takes place in the strongly-interacting limit, we will study whether in two dimensions there is a resembling reminiscent effect. In other words, we will analyze if there are properties of the two strongly-interacting bosons in two dimensions that are like the ones of two noninteracting fermions.\n\n\t\t\t\t After that, we will tackle the localization phenomenon in a one-dimensional system that is caused by an external speckle potential that introduces disorder in the system. We will show that the localization is a robust phenomenon against repulsive contact interactions.\n\n\t\t\t\t Finally, we will study the influence of the spin-orbit coupling in a system of bosons with two possible pseudospin components, associated, for instance, to two hyperfine levels, confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. We will present an exhaustive analysis of the combined effects of the interaction and the spin-orbit coupling in the spectrum and the properties of the system. In particular we show the existence of a crossover in the ground state of the system susceptible to be experimentally identified.
We consider a ring-shaped triple-well potential with few polar bosons with in-plane dipole orientation. By diagonalizing the extended Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we investigate the ground-state properties of the system as we rotate the dipole angle and vary the on-site and dipole-dipole interaction strengths. We find that the anisotropic character of the dipolar interactions, as well as the competition between dipole and on-site interactions, leads to different ground states and that the entanglement between sites also depends on the number of particles. We further characterize the system by studying the condensed fraction and coherence properties for different polarization angles, highlighting the possible effect of the dipolar interaction as a manipulation tool.
We study the crossover of a finite one-dimensional bosonic ensemble from weak to strong interactions in harmonic traps and multi-well potentials. We perform diffusion quantum Monte Carlo calculations which we show to be in good agreement with results from analytical functions that we construct to describe these systems. For the harmonic trap, we use the correlated-pair wavefunction which we introduced in Brouzos and Schmelcher (2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 045301) considering here much larger atom numbers, going beyond the few body ensembles studied in our previous work. We also investigate double and triple wells, changing correspondingly the uncorrelated part of the ansatz to describe efficiently the single-particle behaviour. On-site effects beyond mean-field and standard Bose–Hubbard calculations that appear in densities being captured by our analytical functions are explored.
We explore the tunneling dynamics of strongly correlated bosonic mixtures in a one-dimensional double well. The roles of the inter- and intraspecies interactions and their interplay are investigated using the numerically exact multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method. The dynamics is studied for three initial configurations: complete and partial population imbalance and a species-separated state. Increasing the interspecies interaction leads to a strong increase of the tunneling time period analogous to the quantum self-trapping for condensates. The intraspecies repulsion can suppress or enhance the tunneling period depending on the strength of the interspecies correlations as well as the initial configuration. Completely correlated tunneling between the two species and within the same species as well as mechanisms of species separation and counterflow are revealed. These effects are explained by studying the few-body energy spectra as well as the properties of the contributing stationary states.