Abstract We study the beyond-mean-field Josephson dynamics of the relative phase between two coupled macroscopic quantum systems. Using a covariant background field method, we derive the one-loop only-phase quantum effective action and the corresponding equation of motion for the quantum average of the phase. These analytical results are benchmarked against the exact quantum dynamics of the two-site Bose-Hubbard model, demonstrating a relevant improvement over the standard mean-field predictions across a wide range of interaction strengths.
Abstract We study the beyond-mean-field Josephson dynamics of the relative phase between two coupled macroscopic quantum systems. Using a covariant background field method, we derive the one-loop only-phase quantum effective action and the corresponding equation of motion for the quantum average of the phase. These analytical results are benchmarked against the exact quantum dynamics of the two-site Bose-Hubbard model, demonstrating a relevant improvement over the standard mean-field predictions across a wide range of interaction strengths.
ABSTRACT We investigate quantum corrections to the Josephson dynamics of two weakly coupled Bose–Einstein condensates using the population imbalance as the sole dynamical variable. Starting from the two‐variable action, we derive the imbalance‐only Lagrangian with a position‐dependent mass and quantize it via symmetric operator ordering. The leading quantum corrections to the classical potential and mass are computed via the one‐loop quantum effective action, using a covariant background‐field method that fully accounts for the coordinate dependence of the mass. This yields explicit expressions for the effective potential and the effective mass, from which we derive the quantum‐corrected Josephson frequency. Numerical comparison with exact diagonalization of the two‐site Bose–Hubbard model shows that the imbalance‐only formulation performs better than the complementary phase‐only approach in the regime of weak interactions.
The mean-field approach to two-site Bose-Hubbard systems is well established and leads to nonlinear classical equations of motion for the population imbalance and the phase difference. It can, e.g., be based on the representation of the solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation either by a single Glauber state or by a single atomic (SU(2)) coherent state [S. Wimberger et al., Phys. Rev. A 103, 023326 (2021)]. We demonstrate that quantum effects beyond the mean-field approximation are easily uncovered if, instead, a multi-configuration ansatz with a few time-dependent SU(2) basis functions is used in the variational principle. For the case of plasma oscillations, the use of just two basis states, whose time-dependent parameters are determined variationally, already gives good qualitative agreement of the phase space dynamics with numerically exact quantum solutions. In order to correctly account for more non-trivial effects, like macroscopic quantum self trapping, moderately more basis states are needed. If one is interested in the onset of spontaneous symmetry breaking, however, a multiplicity of two gives a big improvement towards the exact result already. In any case, the number of variational trajectories needed for good agreement with full quantum results is orders of magnitude smaller than in the semiclassical case, which is based on multiple mean-field trajectories.
We formulate a method for studying the quantum field dynamics of ultracold Bose gases confined within optical lattice potentials, within the lowest Bloch-band Bose-Hubbard model. Our formalism extends the two-sites results of Vardi and Anglin [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 568 (2001)] to the general case of M lattice sites. The methodology is based on mapping the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian to an SU(M) pseudospin problem and truncating the resulting hierarchy of dynamical equations for correlation functions, up to pair correlations between SU(M) generators. Agreement with few-site exact many-particle calculations is consistently better than the corresponding Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approximation. Moreover, our approximation compares favorably with a more elaborate two-particle irreducible effective action formalism, at a fraction of the analytic and numerical effort.
We investigate the superfluid dynamics of a Josephson junction beyond the mean-field description, incorporating the role of thermal fluctuations as well as quantum fluctuations. Using a formalism that accounts for the fluctuations in a homogeneous gas, and under the assumption that the transport of the non-condensed component is negligible, we derive a corrected equation of motion within the two-site approximation. The resulting corrections for the typical dynamical quantities, like the Josephson frequency, the strength of macroscopic quantum self-trapping, and the threshold for spontaneous symmetry breaking, allow us to predict the effects of both types of fluctuations and assess their relative importance in different regimes in a semianalytical fashion. For all the dynamical quantities, the quantum fluctuations are shown to play an opposite role with respect to the thermal fluctuations. Josephson frequency is decreased by thermal fluctuations and both the critical strenghts of macroscopic quantum self trapping and spontaneous symmetry breaking are increased. We assess the experimentally accessible regimes by calculating the relevant parameters of recent experimental realizations of Bosonic Josephson junction and show that the expected regime is dominated by quantum fluctuations.
We investigate finite-size quantum effects in the dynamics of N bosonic particles which are tunneling between two sites adopting the two-site Bose-Hubbard model. By using time-dependent atomic coherent states (ACSs) we extend the standard mean-field equations of this bosonic Josephson junction, which are based on time-dependent Glauber coherent states. In this way we find 1/N corrections to familiar mean-field (MF) results: the frequency of macroscopic oscillation between the two sites, the critical parameter for the dynamical macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST), and the attractive critical interaction strength for the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) of the ground state. To validate our analytical results we perform numerical simulations of the quantum dynamics. In the case of Josephson oscillations around a balanced configuration we also find that, for a few atoms, the numerical results are in good agreement with the predictions of time-dependent ACS variational approach, provided that the time evolution is not too long. Also, the numerical results of SSB are better reproduced by the ACS approach than with the MF approach. Instead, the onset of MQST is correctly reproduced by ACS theory only in the large N regime and, for this phenomenon, the 1/N correction to the MF formula is not reliable.
The mean-field approach to two-site Bose–Hubbard systems is well-established and leads to non-linear classical equations of motion for population imbalance and phase difference. It can, for example, be based on the representation of the solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation either by a single Glauber state or by a single atomic (SU(2)) coherent state [S. Wimberger et al., Phys. Rev. A 103, 023326 (2021)]. We demonstrate that quantum effects beyond the mean-field approximation are easily uncovered if, instead, a multiconfiguration ansatz with a few time-dependent SU(2) basis functions is used in the variational principle. For the case of plasma oscillations, the use of just two basis states, whose time-dependent parameters are determined variationally, already gives a good qualitative agreement of the phase space dynamics with numerically exact quantum solutions. In order to correctly account for more non-trivial effects, like macroscopic quantum self-trapping, moderately more basis states are needed. For the onset of spontaneous symmetry breaking, however, a multiplicity of 2 gives a significant improvement already. In any case, the number of variational trajectories needed for good agreement with the full quantum results is orders of magnitude smaller than that in the semi-classical case, which is based on multiple mean-field trajectories.