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Non-equilibrium dynamics in tunnel-coupled Bose gases

Yuri Van Nieuwkerk

Published Jan 1, 2020• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This thesis presents four theoretical studies on pairs of tunnel-coupled one-dimensional Bose gases. It first recapitulates how at low energies, the gases’ symmetric and antisymmetric combinations of density and phase are governed by two Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids (TLL). Tunneling between the gases is believed to yield a quantum sine-Gordon model for the antisymmetric sector. The theoretical background and various applications of this model are summarized, before presenting the first new theoretical results. These show in detail how matter-wave interference measurements can access eigenvalues of the relative phase operator from the TLL, allowing to study the operator’s distribution functions and multi-point correlators. The derivation clarifies why this construction is limited to short expansion times and weak interactions and what modifications occur away from this limit. This leads to a new formula predicting longitudinal “density ripples”. The second half of the thesis was stimulated by recent and unexplained experimental results in the tunnel-coupled case, where density-phase oscillations were seen to rapidly damp out. The work first studies whether this can be explained within a translationally invariant sine-Gordon model. Treating this model in a self-consistent harmonic approximation leads to a negative conclusion. Second, the next leading perturbation due to the tunnel-coupling is investigated in a box geometry. Although this yields a non-negligible coupling between the (anti)symmetric sectors, the effects are not strong enough to explain the damping. Finally, a new low-energy theory is developed, which does not rely on the TLL and which allows to study the roles of both higher excited levels of the transverse potential and of a realistic longitudinal potential. Strong damping is observed as a result of the longitudinal potential, with a dependence on the particle number that is compatible with experimental results. This indicates that performing the experiments in a hard-wall box potential might eliminate the damping effects.

DOI
10.5287/ora-wx4oy0v6o

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This thesis presents four theoretical studies on pairs of tunnel-coupled one-dimensional Bose gases. It first recapitulates how at low energies, the gases’ symmetric and antisymmetric combinations of density and phase are governed by two Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids (TLL). Tunneling between the gases is believed to yield a quantum sine-Gordon model for the antisymmetric sector. The theoretical background and various applications of this model are summarized, before presenting the first new theoretical results. These show in detail how matter-wave interference measurements can access eigenvalues of the relative phase operator from the TLL, allowing to study the operator’s distribution functions and multi-point correlators. The derivation clarifies why this construction is limited to short expansion times and weak interactions and what modifications occur away from this limit. This leads to a new formula predicting longitudinal “density ripples”. The second half of the thesis was stimulated by recent and unexplained experimental results in the tunnel-coupled case, where density-phase oscillations were seen to rapidly damp out. The work first studies whether this can be explained within a translationally invariant sine-Gordon model. Treating this model in a self-consistent harmonic approximation leads to a negative conclusion. Second, the next leading perturbation due to the tunnel-coupling is investigated in a box geometry. Although this yields a non-negligible coupling between the (anti)symmetric sectors, the effects are not strong enough to explain the damping. Finally, a new low-energy theory is developed, which does not rely on the TLL and which allows to study the roles of both higher excited levels of the transverse potential and of a realistic longitudinal potential. Strong damping is observed as a result of the longitudinal potential, with a dependence on the particle number that is compatible with experimental results. This indicates that performing the experiments in a hard-wall box potential might eliminate the damping effects.
We consider a model of two tunnel-coupled one-dimensional Bose gases with hard-wall boundary conditions. Bosonizing the model and retaining only the most relevant interactions leads to a decoupled theory consisting of a quantum sine-Gordon model and a free boson, describing respectively the antisymmetric and symmetric combinations of the phase fields. We go beyond this description by retaining the perturbation with the next smallest scaling dimension. This perturbation carries conformal spin and couples the two sectors. We carry out a detailed investigation of the effects of this coupling on the non-equilibrium dynamics of the model. We focus in particular on the role played by spatial inhomogeneities in the initial state in a quantum quench setup.
While the mechanisms governing the equilibrium properties of quantum gases are today relatively well understood, their non-equilibrium counterparts remain largely unknown. In this thesis, we theoretically explore the non-equilibrium physics of low-dimensional, interacting Bose gases in two representative configurations. In the first one, we consider an isolated Bose superfluid in two dimensions following a quench of the coupling constant. Using a quantum hydrodynamic description combined with a Keldysh field formalism, we derive quantum kinetic equations for the low-energy phononic excitations of the system. This enables us to describe the system's evolution from its short-time (prethermal) coherent dynamics to its long-time thermalization. In particular, we derive and discuss the Landau-Beliaev damping rates both in the standard perturbative approach and within a self-consistent extension of the theory. The results are also discussed in the light of recent experiments. Our second study explores a one-dimensional, periodically-driven quantum system, a Bose gas subjected to periodically-kicked interactions. In the limit of infinitely short kicks, this system was previously shown to exhibit a fast exponential spreading of the wave function. By revisiting this problem for kicks of arbitrary duration, we demonstrate that, in this case, the spreading is not exponential but sub-diffusive at long time. Our findings indicate that the breakdown of exponential spreading occurs at very short times even for extremely short kicks, suggesting that sub-diffusion is more the rule than the exception in that system.
We consider a prime example of simulating interacting relativistic QFT with cold atoms: the realisation of the sine-Gordon model by tunnel-coupled quasi-1D Bose gases. While experiments have shown that it can realise the sine-Gordon model in equilibrium, studies of non-equilibrium dynamics have revealed phase-locking behaviour that contrasts with predictions from sine-Gordon field theory. Here, we examine a one-dimensional field-theoretic model of the system and find that the phase-locking behaviour can be understood in terms of the longitudinal harmonic trap, and that the additional degrees of freedom observed in the experiment do not appear to play a significant role. Therefore, the experimental setup provides a good simulator of the sine-Gordon quantum field theory, even out of equilibrium, if the inhomogeneous background induced by the trap is taken into account. Furthermore, our results support the idea that modifying the longitudinal trap to a box shape should result in agreement with standard sine-Gordon dynamics. The main remaining open issues are accounting for 3D corrections and modelling the effect of the boundaries.
Abstract Quantum entanglement exists in nature but is absent in classical physics, hence it fundamentally distinguishes quantum from classical theories. While entanglement is routinely observed for few-body systems, it is significantly more challenging to witness in quantum many-body systems. Here, we theoretically study entanglement between two parallel and spatially separated Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids (TLLs) partitioned along the longitudinal axis. In particular, we focus on 1D Bose gases as a realization of TLLs and investigate two experimentally relevant situations: tunnel-coupled gases at finite temperatures and after coherent splitting. In both scenarios, we analytically calculate the logarithmic negativity and identify a threshold temperature below which the system is entangled. Notably, this threshold temperature is accessible in the current and near-term 1D Bose gas experiments. Furthermore, we investigate the crossover between quantum and classical correlations in the vicinity of the threshold temperature by comparing logarithmic negativity with mutual information. We argue that the initial mutual information established by the coherent splitting is conserved in TLL dynamics, thus preventing certain generalized Gibbs ensembles from being reached during prethermalization. Moreover, both logarithmic negativity and mutual information are found to scale extensively with the subsystem’s length. Although the ground-state entanglement between coupled TLLs has been predicted to be extensive, this setting is largely overlooked compared to other partitions. Our work extends the study of entanglement between coupled TLLs to finite temperatures and out-of-equilibrium regimes, and provides a strategy towards experimental detection of extensive entanglement in quantum many-body systems at finite temperatures.
Ultracold gases are a versatile platform to simulate condensed matter physics, as virtually any parameter is experimentally tunable. In particular, highly anisotropic traps allow the realization of low-dimensional systems, where the role of quantum fluctuations is enhanced. I investigate the paradigmatic model of a one-dimensional Bose gas with contact interactions, a.k.a the Lieb-Liniger model, using powerful analytical tools such as Bethe Ansatz, Conformal Field Theory and the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid formalism, as well as the Bose-Fermi mapping. The effect of an additional harmonic trap in the longitudinal direction is studied within the Local Density Approximation. These methods allow to investigate with high accuracy its ground-state thermodynamics of the gas, its excitation spectra and correlation functions, from the k-body local correlations to the momentum distribution and the dynamical structure factor. These quantities characterize the coherence and superfluidity of the gas. In particular, I study the drag force exerted by a weak gaussian barrier stirred into the gas within linear response theory. Then, I investigate the appearance of a multimode structure obtained by releasing a transverse trapping, and the dimensional crossover in the limit of an infinite number of transverse modes.
Abstract We derive a self-consistent time-dependent harmonic approximation for the quantum sine-Gordon model out of equilibrium and apply the method to the dynamics of tunnel-coupled one-dimensional Bose gases. We determine the time evolution of experimentally relevant observables and in particular derive results for the probability distribution of subsystem phase fluctuations. We investigate the regime of validity of the approximation by applying it to the simpler case of a nonlinear harmonic oscillator, for which numerically exact results are available. We complement our self-consistent harmonic approximation by exact results at the free fermion point of the sine-Gordon model.