Quantum chaos experiments using interacting atoms in a BEC

Mark G. Raizen, D. Steck

Windell H. Oskay

Gil S. Summy, Peyman Ahmadi, Brian P. Timmons

Cheng-Jie Liu, Yuchen Meng, Jieli Qin +1 more

We investigate both the classical and quantum dynamics of a spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) system subject to periodic driving of quadratic Zeeman splitting. Without driving, the system is integrable. Here, we found that increasing the driving strength will drive the system to chaos. Classically, we demonstrate chaotic dynamics by examining the Poincaré section and Lyapunov exponent. While in the quantum regime, the level statistic and Husimi distribution are studied, and they also clearly indicate the onset of quantum chaos. The dynamics of atom number and out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) are also studied. In the integrable region, the variance of atom number and OTOC both remain very small during the time evolution; while in the chaos region, a quick increase is observed in the early time. This work presents a quantum many-body system showing chaotic behavior and can be readily realized in experiment.

John Martin, Bertrand Georgeot, Dima L. Shepelyansky

Using Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we study the time reversibility of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in kicked optical lattices, showing that in the regime of quantum chaos, the dynamics can be inverted from explosion to collapse. The accuracy of time reversal decreases with the increase of atom interactions in BEC, until it is completely lost. Surprisingly, quantum chaos helps to restore time reversibility. These predictions can be tested with existing experimental setups.

Dominique Delande