The Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg (LZS) effect in a model system of interacting tunneling particles is studied numerically and analytically. Each of N tunneling particles interacts with each of the others with the same coupling J. This problem maps onto that of the LZS effect for a large spin
S=N/2. The mean-field limit $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{N}\ensuremath{\infty}$ corresponds to the classical limit $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{S}\ensuremath{\infty}$ for the effective spin. It is shown that the ferromagnetic coupling
J>0 tends to suppress the LZS transitions. For $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{N}\ensuremath{\infty}$ there is a critical value of J above which the staying probability P does not go to zero in the slow sweep limit, unlike the standard LZS effect. For
J<0 LZS transitions are boosted and
P=0 for a set of finite values of the sweep rate for $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{N}\ensuremath{\infty}.$ Various limiting cases such as strong and weak interaction, slow and fast sweep are considered analytically. It is shown that the mean-field approach works well for arbitrary N if the interaction J is weak.
We present a detailed analysis of the Landau–Zener problem for an interacting Bose–Einstein condensate in a time-varying double-well trap, especially focusing on the relation between the full many-particle problem and the mean-field approximation. Due to the nonlinear self-interaction a dynamical instability occurs, which leads to a breakdown of adiabaticity and thus fundamentally alters the dynamics. It is shown that essentially all the features of the Landau–Zener problem including the depletion of the condensate mode can be already understood within a semiclassical phase-space picture. In particular, this treatment resolves the formerly imputed incommutability of the adiabatic and semiclassical limits. The possibility of exploiting Landau–Zener sweeps to generate squeezed states for spectroscopic tasks is analyzed in detail. Moreover, we study the influence of phase noise and propose a Landau–Zener sweep as a sensitive yet readily implementable probe for decoherence, since the noise has significant effect on the transition rate for slow parameter variations.