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arXiv:2106.10550 · Physical Review A

Matter waves, single-mode excitations of the matter-wave field, and the atomtronic transistor oscillator

Dana Z. Anderson

Published Sep 8, 2021• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A self-consistent theoretical treatment of a triple-well atomtronic transistor circuit reveals the mechanism of gain, conditions of oscillation, and properties of the subsequent coherent matter waves emitted by the circuit. A Bose-condensed reservoir of atoms in a large source well provides a chemical potential that drives circuit dynamics. The theory is based on the ansatz that a condensate arises in the transistor gate well as a displaced ground state, that is, one that undergoes dipole oscillation in the well. That gate atoms remain condensed and oscillating is shown to be a consequence of the cooling induced by the emission of a matter wave into the vacuum. Key circuit parameters such as the transistor transconductance and output current are derived by transitioning to a classical equivalent circuit model. Voltage-like and current-like matter-wave circuit wave fields are introduced in analogy with microwave circuits, as well as an impedance relationship between the two. This leads to a notion of a classically coherent matter wave that is the dual of a coherent electromagnetic wave and which is distinct from a de Broglie matter wave associated with cold atoms. Subjecting the emitted atom flux to an atomic potential that will reduce the de Broglie wavelength, for example, will increase the classical matter-wave wavelength. Quantization of the classical matter-wave fields leads to the dual of the photon that is identified not as an atom but as something else, which is here dubbed a ``matteron.''

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.033311

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A self-consistent theoretical treatment of a triple-well atomtronic transistor circuit reveals the mechanism of gain, conditions of oscillation, and properties of the subsequent coherent matter waves emitted by the circuit. A Bose-condensed reservoir of atoms in a large source well provides a chemical potential that drives circuit dynamics. The theory is based on the ansatz that a condensate arises in the transistor gate well as a displaced ground state, that is, one that undergoes dipole oscillation in the well. That gate atoms remain condensed and oscillating is shown to be a consequence of the cooling induced by the emission of a matter wave into the vacuum. Key circuit parameters such as the transistor transconductance and output current are derived by transitioning to a classical equivalent circuit model. Voltage-like and current-like matter-wave circuit wave fields are introduced in analogy with microwave circuits, as well as an impedance relationship between the two. This leads to a notion of a classically coherent matter wave that is the dual of a coherent electromagnetic wave and which is distinct from a de Broglie matter wave associated with cold atoms. Subjecting the emitted atom flux to an atomic potential that will reduce the de Broglie wavelength, for example, will increase the classical matter-wave wavelength. Quantization of the classical matter-wave fields leads to the dual of the photon that is identified not as an atom but as something else, which is here dubbed a ``matteron.''
The atomtronic matter-wave triple-well transistor is theoretically predicted to exhibit current gain and act as a coherent matter-wave emitter. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of an atomtronic transistor composed of a triple-well potential -- source, gate, and drain -- modeled by the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We systematically explore the dependence of the drain population and the current on the source bias potential and the strength of the interatomic interaction. Our simulations reveal signatures of resonant tunneling when the source chemical potential aligns with discrete energy levels in the gate well, leading to coherent matter-wave emission in the drain. Contrary to previous many-body studies that predicted interaction-induced current gain via coupling to gate well modes, our results suggest that coherence in the drain is primarily governed by single-particle resonances, with no evident broadening from nonlinear coupling.
A gauge field treatment of a current oscillating at frequency ν of interacting neutral atoms leads to a set of matter-wave duals to Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field. In contrast to electromagnetics, the velocity of propagation has a lower limit rather than upper limit, and the wave impedance of otherwise free space is negative real-valued rather than 377 Ω. Quantization of the field leads to the matteron, the gauge boson dual to the photon. Unlike the photon, the matteron is bound to an atom and carries negative rather than positive energy, causing the source of the current to undergo cooling. Eigenstates of the combined matter and gauge field annihilation operator define the coherent state of the matter-wave field, which exhibits classical coherence in the limit of large excitation.
An atomtronic transistor circuit is used to realize a driven matterwave oscillator. The transistor consists of Source and Drain regions separated by a narrow Gate well. Quasi-steady-state behavior is determined from a thermodynamic model, which reveals two oscillation threshold regimes. One is due to the onset of Bose-Einstein condensation in the Gate well, the other is due to the appearance of a negative transresistance regime of the transistor. The thresholds of oscillation are shown to be primarily dependent on the potential energy height difference between Gate-Drain and Gate-Source barriers. The transistor potential is established with a combination of magnetic and optical fields using a compound glass and silicon substrate atom chip. The onset of oscillation and the output matterwave are observed through in-trap imaging. Time-of-flight absorption imaging is used to determine the time dependence of the Source well thermal and chemical energies as well as to estimate the value of the closed-loop ohmic Gate resistance, which is negative and is observed to cause cooling of Source atoms.
The work of this dissertation falls into two broad categories. In the first part, I describe loading a single atom from a reservoir into a blue-detuned crossed vortex bottle beam trap using a dynamic 1D optical lattice. The lattice beams are frequency chirped using acousto-optic modulators, which causes the lattice to move along its axial direction and behave like an optical conveyor belt. A stationary lattice is initially loaded with approximately 6000 atoms from a reservoir, and the conveyor belt transports them 1.1 mm from the reservoir to a bottle beam trap, where a single atom is loaded via light-assisted collisions. Photon counting data confirm that an atom can be delivered and loaded into the bottle beam trap 13.1% of the time. In part II, I describe a theory and experiment in the field of atomtronics that displays a coherent gain mechanism for a triple-well matterwave transistor oscillator. I start with a well-established semi-classical description of an atomtronic transistor but model the system using a many-body formalism. The quantum model predicts interesting physics when the atoms flowing through the transistor have sufficiently low enough temperatures such that the motional state of a dipole oscillating BEC, placed in the transistor itself, couples atom transitions between high lying transistor energy eigenstates. In this regime, the coupling gives rise to a new gain mechanism that increases the flux of matterwaves flowing out of the transistor system, compared to when the coupling is absent. Our experiments suggest that the gain mechanism is coherent and increases the spread of matterwave momenta that flows out of the transistor.
Maxwell matter waves emerge from a perspective, complementary to de Broglie's, that matter is fundamentally a wave phenomenon whose particle aspects are revealed by quantum mechanics. Their quantum mechanical description is derived through the introduction of a matter vector potential, having frequency ω0ω_0ω0​, to Schrodinger's equation for a massive particle. Maxwell matter waves are then seen to be coherent excitations of a single-mode of the matter-wave field. In the classical regime, their mechanics is captured by a matter analog of Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field. As such, Maxwell matter waves enable a spectrum of systems that have useful optical analogs, such as resonant matter-wave interferometric sensors and matter-wave parametric oscillators. These waves are associated with a wavelength that is tied to the drive frequency ω0ω_0ω0​ rather than to the massive particle's energy, as is ordinarily the case with de Broglie matter waves. As a result, simple interferometric measurements lead to different outcomes for the two types of waves. While their apparent departure from de Broglie character is surprising, Maxwell matter waves are wholly consistent with quantum mechanics.
An integrated coherent matter wave circuit is a single device, analogous to an integrated optical circuit, in which coherent de Broglie waves are created and then launched into waveguides where they can be switched, divided, recombined, and detected as they propagate. Applications of such circuits include guided atom interferometers, atomtronic circuits, and precisely controlled delivery of atoms. Here we report experiments demonstrating integrated circuits for guided coherent matter waves. The circuit elements are created with the painted potential technique, a form of time-averaged optical dipole potential in which a rapidly moving, tightly focused laser beam exerts forces on atoms through their electric polarizability. The source of coherent matter waves is a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). We launch BECs into painted waveguides that guide them around bends and form switches, phase coherent beamsplitters, and closed circuits. These are the basic elements that are needed to engineer arbitrarily complex matter wave circuitry.