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arXiv:1511.00173 · New Journal of Physics

Suppression and enhancement of decoherence in an atomic Josephson junction

Yonathan Japha, Shuyu Zhou, Mark Keil, R. Folman, Carsten Henkel, Amichay Vardi

Published May 10, 2016• 6 citations

Abstract

We investigate the role of interatomic interactions when a Bose gas, in a double-well potential with a finite tunneling probability (a ‘Bose–Josephson junction’), is exposed to external noise. We examine the rate of decoherence of a system initially in its ground state with equal probability amplitudes in both sites. The noise may induce two kinds of effects: firstly, random shifts in the relative phase or number difference between the two wells and secondly, loss of atoms from the trap. The effects of induced phase fluctuations are mitigated by atom–atom interactions and tunneling, such that the dephasing rate may be suppressed by half its single-atom value. Random fluctuations may also be induced in the population difference between the wells, in which case atom–atom interactions considerably enhance the decoherence rate. A similar scenario is predicted for the case of atom loss, even if the loss rates from the two sites are equal. We find that if the initial state is number-squeezed due to interactions, then the loss process induces population fluctuations that reduce the coherence across the junction. We examine the parameters relevant for these effects in a typical atom chip device, using a simple model of the trapping potential, experimental data, and the theory of magnetic field fluctuations near metallic conductors. These results provide a framework for mapping the dynamical range of barriers engineered for specific applications and set the stage for more complex atom circuits (‘atomtronics’).

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/18/5/055008

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We investigate the role of interatomic interactions when a Bose gas, in a double-well potential with a finite tunneling probability (a ‘Bose–Josephson junction’), is exposed to external noise. We examine the rate of decoherence of a system initially in its ground state with equal probability amplitudes in both sites. The noise may induce two kinds of effects: firstly, random shifts in the relative phase or number difference between the two wells and secondly, loss of atoms from the trap. The effects of induced phase fluctuations are mitigated by atom–atom interactions and tunneling, such that the dephasing rate may be suppressed by half its single-atom value. Random fluctuations may also be induced in the population difference between the wells, in which case atom–atom interactions considerably enhance the decoherence rate. A similar scenario is predicted for the case of atom loss, even if the loss rates from the two sites are equal. We find that if the initial state is number-squeezed due to interactions, then the loss process induces population fluctuations that reduce the coherence across the junction. We examine the parameters relevant for these effects in a typical atom chip device, using a simple model of the trapping potential, experimental data, and the theory of magnetic field fluctuations near metallic conductors. These results provide a framework for mapping the dynamical range of barriers engineered for specific applications and set the stage for more complex atom circuits (‘atomtronics’).

Squeezed states and macroscopic superpositions of coherent states have been predicted to be generated dynamically in Bose Josephson junctions. We solve exactly the quantum dynamics of such a junction in the presence of a classical noise coupled to the population-imbalance number operator (phase noise), accounting for, for example, the experimentally relevant fluctuations of the magnetic field. We calculate the correction to the decay of the visibility induced by the noise in the non-Markovian regime. Furthermore, we predict that such a noise induces an anomalous rate of decoherence among the components of the macroscopic superpositions, which is independent of the total number of atoms, leading to potential interferometric applications.

We study the effect of decoherence on dynamical phase diffusion in the two-site Bose-Hubbard model. Starting with an odd parity excited coherent state, the initial loss of single-particle coherence varies from small bound oscillations in the Rabi regime, through hyperbolic depletion in the Josephson regime, to a Gaussian decay in the Fock regime. The inclusion of local-site noise, measuring the relative number difference between the modes, is shown to enhance phase diffusion. In comparison, site-indiscriminate noise measuring the population imbalance between the two quasimomentum modes slows down the loss of single-particle coherence. Decoherence thus either enhances or suppresses phase diffusion, depending on the details of system-bath coupling and the overlap of decoherence pointer states with collisional-entanglement pointer states. The deceleration of phase diffusion due to the coupling with the environment may be viewed as a many-body quantum Zeno effect. The extended effective decay times in the presence of projective measurement are further enhanced with increasing number of particles

N

by a bosonic factor of

\sqrt{N}

in the Fock regime and

N/\text{log}\text{ }N

in the Josephson regime.

We use a two-mode Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian to determine the ground state and dynamical evolution for a Bose Josephson junction realized by an ultracold Bose gas in a double-well trap. We identify Mott-like lobes where number fluctuations are suppressed and the interference fringes in the momentum distribution are strongly reduced. Different from superconducting Josephson junctions, the lobes size increases at increasing wells imbalance. Upon a sudden rise of the barrier between the two wells, an initially phase-coherent state evolves into a coherent superposition of phase states, leading to destructive interference in the time-dependent momentum distribution.

In a two-mode Bose-Josephson junction the dynamics induced by a sudden quench of the tunnel amplitude leads to the periodic formation of entangled states. For instance, squeezed states are formed at short times and macroscopic superpositions of phase states at later times. In atom interferometry, the two modes of the junction play the role of the two arms of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer; use of multiparticle entangled states allows the enhancement of phase sensitivity with respect to that obtained from uncorrelated atoms. Decoherence due to the presence of noise degrades quantum correlations between atoms, thus reducing phase sensitivity. We consider decoherence due to stochastic fluctuations of the energies of the two modes of the junction. We analyze its effect on squeezed states and macroscopic superpositions and calculate the squeezing parameter and the quantum Fisher information during the quenched dynamics. The latter quantity measures the amount of quantum correlations useful in interferometry. For moderate noise intensities, we show that it increases on time scales beyond the squeezing regime. This suggests multicomponent superpositions of phase states as interesting candidates for high-precision atom interferometry.

We explore the interplay between tunneling and interatomic interactions in the dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction. We tune the scattering length of an atomic ^{39}K Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a double-well trap to investigate regimes inaccessible to other superconducting or superfluid systems. In the limit of small-amplitude oscillations, we study the transition from Rabi to plasma oscillations by crossing over from attractive to repulsive interatomic interactions. We observe a critical slowing down in the oscillation frequency by increasing the strength of an attractive interaction up to the point of a quantum phase transition. With sufficiently large initial oscillation amplitude and repulsive interactions, the system enters the macroscopic quantum self-trapping regime, where we observe coherent undamped oscillations with a self-sustained average imbalance of the relative well population. The exquisite agreement between theory and experiments enables the observation of a broad range of many body coherent dynamical regimes driven by tunable tunneling energy, interactions and external forces, with applications spanning from atomtronics to quantum metrology.

Abstract Controlling the tunneling of atoms of one species using a different atom species is a fundamental step in the development of a new class of atom quantum devices, where detection, motion control, and other functions over the atoms, can be achieved by exploiting the interaction between two different atomic species. Here, we theoretically study coherent oscillations of a non-self-interacting Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) species in a triple-well potential controlled by a self-interacting species self-trapped in the central well of the potential. In this system, a blockade, due to the interspecies interaction, prevents atoms of the non-self-interacting species from populating the central well. Thus, for an initial population imbalance between the left- and right-hand wells of the non-self-interacting species, coherent BEC oscillations are induced between these two wells, resembling those of Rabi-like BEC oscillations in a double-well potential. The oscillation period is found to scale linearly with the number of self-trapped atoms as well as with the interspecies interaction strength. This behavior is corroborated by the quantum many-particle and the mean-field models of the system. We show that BEC oscillations can be described by using an effective bosonic Josephson junction with a tunneling amplitude that depends on the number of the self-trapped atoms in the central well. We also consider the effect of the self-trapped atom losses on the coherent oscillations. We show, by using quantum trajectories, that this type of losses leads to a dynamical change in the oscillation period of the non-self-interacting species, which in turn allows the number of self-trapped atoms lost from the system to be estimated.