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Cold atoms

The Truncated Wigner Method for Bose Gases

Janne Ruostekoski, Andrew D. Martin

Published Mar 18, 2013• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We discuss stochastic phase-space methods within the truncated Wigner approximation and show explicitly that they can be used to solve non-equilibrium dynamics of bosonic atoms in one-dimensional traps. We consider systems both with and without an optical lattice, and address different approximations in the stochastic synthesization of quantum statistical correlations of the initial atomic field. We also present a numerically efficient projection method for analyzing correlation functions of the simulation results, and demonstrate physical examples of non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of solitons and atom number squeezing in optical lattices.

DOI
10.1142/9781848168121_0013

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We discuss stochastic phase-space methods within the truncated Wigner approximation and show explicitly that they can be used to solve non-equilibrium dynamics of bosonic atoms in one-dimensional traps. We consider systems both with and without an optical lattice, and address different approximations in the stochastic synthesization of quantum statistical correlations of the initial atomic field. We also present a numerically efficient projection method for analyzing correlation functions of the simulation results, and demonstrate physical examples of non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of solitons and atom number squeezing in optical lattices.
The truncated Wigner approximation is an established approach that describes the dynamics of weakly interacting Bose gases beyond the mean-field level. Although it allows a quantum field to be expressed by a stochastic c-number field, the simulation of the time evolution is still very demanding for most applications. Here, we develop a numerically inexpensive scheme by approximating the c-number field with a variational ansatz. The dynamics of the ansatz function is described by a tractable set of coupled ordinary stochastic differential equations for the respective variational parameters. We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of a three-dimensional Bose gas in a one-dimensional optical lattice with a transverse isotropic harmonic confinement. The accuracy and computational inexpensiveness of our method are demonstrated by comparing its predictions to experimental data.
We study the splitting of a harmonically trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate when we continuously turn up an optical lattice (or a double-well) potential. As the lattice height is increased, quantum fluctuations of atoms are enhanced. The resulting nonequilibrium dynamics of the fragmentation process of the condensate, the loss of the phase coherence of atoms along the lattice, and the reduced atom number fluctuations in individual lattice sites are stochastically studied within the truncated Wigner approximation. We perform a detailed study of the effects of temperature and lattice height on atom dynamics, and investigate the validity of the classical Gross-Pitaevskii equation in optical lattices. We find the atom number squeezing to saturate in deep lattices due to nonadiabaticity in turning up of the lattice potential that is challenging to avoid in experiments when the occupation number of the lattice sites is large, making it difficult to produce strongly number squeezed (or the Mott insulator) states with large filling factors. We also investigate some general numerical properties of the truncated Wigner approximation.
We develop and utilize the SU(3) truncated Wigner approximation (TWA) in order to analyze far-from-equilibrium quantum dynamics of strongly interacting Bose gases in an optical lattice. Specifically, we explicitly represent the corresponding Bose-Hubbard model at an arbitrary filling factor with restricted local Hilbert spaces in terms of SU(3) matrices. Moreover, we introduce a discrete Wigner sampling technique for the SU(3) TWA and examine its performance as well as that of the SU(3) TWA with the Gaussian approximation for the continuous Wigner function. We directly compare outputs of these two approaches with exact computations regarding dynamics of the Bose-Hubbard model at unit filling with a small size and that of a fully connected spin-1 model with a large size. We show that both approaches can quantitatively capture quantum dynamics on a timescale of $\ensuremath{\hbar}/(Jz)$, where JJJ and zzz denote the hopping energy and the coordination number. We apply the two kinds of SU(3) TWA to dynamical spreading of a two-point correlation function of the Bose-Hubbard model on a square lattice with a large system size, which has been measured in recent experiments. Noticeable deviations between the theories and experiments indicate that proper inclusion of effects of the spatial inhomogeneity, which is not straightforward in our formulation of the SU(3) TWA, may be necessary.
Non-Gaussian correlations in a pure state are inextricably linked with certain nonclassical features, such as a non-positive-definite Wigner function. In a commonly used simulation technique in ultracold atoms and quantum optics, known as the truncated Wigner method, the quantum dynamics is mapped to stochastic trajectories in phase space, governed by a positive approximation to the true Wigner distribution. The question thus arises: How accurate is this approach in predicting truly nonclassical behavior? In this article, we benchmark the ability of the truncated Wigner phase-space method to reproduce the non-Gaussian statistics of the single-mode anharmonic oscillator. We find that the this method can reliably predict departures from Gaussian statistics over a wide range of particle numbers, whereas the positive-PPP representation, which involves no approximations, is limited by rapidly growing statistical uncertainty. The truncated Wigner function, furthermore, is able to reproduce the non-Gaussian correlations while satisfying the condition for purity.
We numerically study the imprinting and dynamics of dark solitons in a bosonic atomic gas in a tightly confined one-dimensional harmonic trap both with and without an optical lattice. Quantum and thermal fluctuations are synthesized within the truncated Wigner approximation in the quasicondensate description. We track the soliton coordinates and calculate position and velocity uncertainties. We find that the phase fluctuations lower the classically predicted soliton speed and seed instabilities. Individual runs show interactions of solitons with sound waves, splitting, and disappearing solitons.
We describe an efficient numerical method for simulating the dynamics and steady states of collective spin systems in the presence of dephasing and decay. The method is based on the Schwinger boson representation of spin operators and uses an extension of the truncated Wigner approximation to map the exact open system dynamics onto stochastic differential equations for the corresponding phase space distribution. This approach is most effective in the limit of very large spin quantum numbers, where exact numerical simulations and other approximation methods are no longer applicable. We benchmark this numerical technique for known superradiant decay and spin-squeezing processes and illustrate its application for the simulation of non-equilibrium phase transitions in dissipative spin lattice models.