Dynamics of localised states in a nonlinear system with inhomogeneous input field

Sudharsan Balasubramanian, R Radha, Mihaela Carina Raportaru +2 more

Abstract We study Faraday and resonant waves in two-component quasi-one-dimensional (cigar-shaped) collisionally inhomogeneous Bose–Einstein condensates subject to periodic modulation of the radial confinement. We show by means of extensive numerical simulations that, as the system exhibits stronger spatially-localised binary collisions (whose scattering length is taken for convenience to be of Gaussian form), the system becomes effectively a linear one. In other words, as the scattering length approaches a delta-function, we observe that the two nonlinear configurations typical for binary cigar-shaped condensates, namely the segregated and the symbiotic one, turn into two overlapping Gaussian wave functions typical for linear systems, and that the instability onset times of the Faraday and resonant waves become longer. Moreover, our numerical simulations show that the spatial period of the excited waves (either resonant or Faraday ones) decreases as the inhomogeneity becomes stronger. Our results also demonstrate that the topology of the ground state impacts the dynamics of the ensuing density waves, and that the instability onset times of Faraday and resonant waves, for a given level of inhomogeneity in the two-body interactions, depend on whether the initial configuration is segregated or symbiotic.

E. B. Davies

Ravinder Rupchand Puri

Maximilian Schulz

The study of collective behaviour in many-body systems often explores fundamentally new ideas absent from the mere constituents of such a system. A paradigmatic model for these studies is the spin-1/2 XXZ chain and its fermionic equivalent. This thesis can be broadly divided into the study of two fundamental aspects of this model. Firstly, we discuss localisation phenomena in one dimensional lattices as often experimentally realised in cold atom systems. Secondly, we investigate how disorder and symmetry influence heat transport in spin chains. More specifically, in the first part we consider a system of non-interacting fermions in one dimension subject to a single-particle potential consisting of a strong optical lattice, a harmonic trap, and uncorrelated on-site disorder. We investigate a global inhomogeneous quantum quench and present numerical and analytical results for static and dynamical properties. We show that the approach to the non-thermal equilibrium state is extremely slow and that it implies a sensitivity to disorder parametrically stronger than that expected from Anderson localisation. We also consider the above system in a strong non-uniform electric field. In the non-interacting case, due to Wannier-Stark localisation, the single-particle wave functions are exponentially localised without quenched disorder. We show that this system remains localised in the presence of nearest-neighbour interactions and exhibits physics analogous to models of conventional many-body localisation. The second part explores the hydrodynamics of the disordered XYZ spin chain. Using time-evolving block decimation on open chains of up to 400 spins attached to thermal baths, we probe the energy transport of this system. Our principal findings are as follows. For weak disorder there is a stable diffusive region that persists up to a critical disorder strength that depends on the XY anisotropy. Then, for disorder strengths above this critical value energy transport becomes increasingly subdiffusive.

Mahmoud Abdel‐Aty, Nour Zidan

Mohammed F. Saleh, Patrik Öhberg

Abstract We investigate the effect of a current nonlinearity on the evolution of a trapped atomic Bose–Einstein condensate. We have implemented techniques from the field of nonlinear optics to provide new insights into the irregular dynamics associated with chiral superfluids. We have found that the current nonlinearity can be treated as a Kerr-like nonlinearity modulated by a spatiotemporal function that can lead to a number of processes such as broadening and compression of the wavefunction. In the long time scale limit, the wavefunction is drastically deformed and delocalised compared to its initial state. However, localised modes which oscillate with the period of the inverse trap frequency can still be observed.