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arXiv:1608.07189 · Physical Review A

Infinite barriers and symmetries for a few trapped particles in one dimension

Nathan L. Harshman

Published May 16, 2017• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

This article investigates the properties of a few interacting particles trapped in a few wells and how these properties change under adiabatic tuning of interaction strength and interwell tunneling. While some system properties are dependent on the specific shapes of the traps and the interactions, this article applies symmetry analysis to identify generic features in the spectrum of stationary states of few-particle, few-well systems. Extended attention is given to a simple but flexible three-parameter model of two particles in two wells in one dimension. A key insight is that two limiting cases, hard-core repulsion and no interwell tunneling, can both be treated as emergent symmetries of the few-particle Hamiltonian. These symmetries are the mathematical consequences of infinite barriers in configuration space. They are necessary to explain the pattern of degeneracies in the energy spectrum, to understand how degeneracies are broken for models away from limiting cases, and to explain separability and integrability. These symmetry methods are extendable to more complicated models and the results have practical consequences for stable state control in few-particle, few-well systems with ultracold atoms in optical traps.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.053616

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This article investigates the properties of a few interacting particles trapped in a few wells and how these properties change under adiabatic tuning of interaction strength and interwell tunneling. While some system properties are dependent on the specific shapes of the traps and the interactions, this article applies symmetry analysis to identify generic features in the spectrum of stationary states of few-particle, few-well systems. Extended attention is given to a simple but flexible three-parameter model of two particles in two wells in one dimension. A key insight is that two limiting cases, hard-core repulsion and no interwell tunneling, can both be treated as emergent symmetries of the few-particle Hamiltonian. These symmetries are the mathematical consequences of infinite barriers in configuration space. They are necessary to explain the pattern of degeneracies in the energy spectrum, to understand how degeneracies are broken for models away from limiting cases, and to explain separability and integrability. These symmetry methods are extendable to more complicated models and the results have practical consequences for stable state control in few-particle, few-well systems with ultracold atoms in optical traps.
This is the first in a pair of articles that classify the configuration space and kinematic symmetry groups for NNN identical particles in one-dimensional traps experiencing Galilean-invariant two-body interactions. These symmetries explain degeneracies in the few-body spectrum and demonstrate how tuning the trap shape and the particle interactions can manipulate these degeneracies. The additional symmetries that emerge in the non-interacting limit and in the unitary limit of an infinitely strong contact interaction are sufficient to algebraically solve for the spectrum and degeneracy in terms of the one-particle observables. Symmetry also determines the degree to which the algebraic expressions for energy level shifts by weak interactions or nearly-unitary interactions are universal, i.e. independent of trap shape and details of the interaction. Identical fermions and bosons with and without spin are considered. This article sequentially analyzes the symmetries of one, two and three particles in asymmetric, symmetric, and harmonic traps; the sequel article treats the NNN particle case.
Spectroscopic labels for a few particles with spin that are harmonically trapped in one dimension with effectively zero-range interactions are provided by quantum numbers that characterize the symmetries of the Hamiltonian: permutations of identical particles, parity inversion, and the separability of the center-of-mass. The exact solutions for the noninteracting and infinitely repulsive cases are reduced with respect to these symmetries. This reduction explains how states of single-component and multicomponent fermions and bosons transform under adiabatic evolution from noninteracting to strong hard-core repulsion. These spectroscopic methods also clarify previous analytic and numerical results for intermediate values of interaction strength. Several examples, including adiabatic mapping for two-component fermionic states in the cases N=3−−5N=3--5N=3−−5, are provided.
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.
We study the correlation properties of the ground states of few ultracold bosons, trapped in double wells of varying barrier height in one dimension. Extending previous results on the signature of the transition from a Bose-condensed state via fragmentation to the hard-core limit, we provide a deeper understanding of that transition by relating it to the loss of coherence in the one-body density matrix and to the emerging long-range tail in the momentum spectrum. These are accounted for in detail by discussing the natural orbitals and their occupations. Our discussion is complemented by an analysis of the two-body correlation function.
Weak potential wells (or traps) in one and two dimensions, and the potential wells slightly deeper than the critical ones in three dimensions, feature shallow bound states with localization length much larger than the well radii. We address a simple fundamental question of how many repulsively interacting bosons can be localized by such traps. We find that under rather generic conditions, for both weakly and strongly repulsive particles, in two and three dimensions---but not in one-dimension---the potential well will trap infinitely many bosons. For example, even hard-core repulsive interactions do not prevent this ``trapping collapse'' phenomenon from taking place. A quantum system acquires the phenomenon along with the universal (asymptotically exact) classical-field behavior at large distances, allowing generic description by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We also discuss the possibility of having a transition between the infinite and finite number of trapped particles when strong repulsive interparticle correlations are increased.
This paper introduces a model for a few repulsively interacting particles trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic well and provides exact solutions for the three-particle case. This model is a hybrid of two other well-known systems, the Calogero model and the contact-interaction model, and coincides with them in limiting cases. However, those models have purely two-body interactions whereas this model has intrinsically few-body interactions. Comparing these three models provides clarifying distinctions among the properties of symmetry, separability, and integrability. The model's analytic solutions provide a useful basis to improve approximation schemes, especially near the unitary limit of hard-core contact interactions.