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arXiv:cond-mat/0609535 · Physical Review A

Interaction-induced quantum ratchet in a Bose-Einstein condensate

Dario Poletti, Giuliano Benenti, Giulio Casati, Baowen Li

Published Aug 24, 2007• 23 citations
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Abstract

We study the dynamics of a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a toroidal trap and exposed to a pair of periodically flashed optical lattices. We first prove that in the noninteracting case this system can present a quantum symmetry which forbids the ratchet effect classically expected. We then show how many-body atom-atom interactions, treated within the mean-field approximation, can break this quantum symmetry, thus generating directed transport.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.76.023421

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We study the dynamics of a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a toroidal trap and exposed to a pair of periodically flashed optical lattices. We first prove that in the noninteracting case this system can present a quantum symmetry which forbids the ratchet effect classically expected. We then show how many-body atom-atom interactions, treated within the mean-field approximation, can break this quantum symmetry, thus generating directed transport.
We study the dynamics of bright solitons formed in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive atomic interactions perturbed by a weak bichromatic optical lattice potential. The lattice depth is a biperiodic function of time with a zero mean, which realizes a flashing ratchet for matter-wave solitons. We find that the average velocity of a soliton and the soliton current induced by the ratchet depend on the number of atoms in the soliton. As a consequence, soliton transport can be induced through scattering of different solitons. In the regime when matter-wave solitons are narrow compared to the lattice period the dynamics is well described by the effective Hamiltonian theory.
We study the response of a Bose-Einstein condensate to an unbiased periodic driving potential. By controlling the space and time symmetries of the driving we show how a directed current can be induced, producing a coherent quantum ratchet. Weak driving induces a regular behavior, and space and time symmetries must both be broken to produce a current. For strong driving, the behavior becomes chaotic and the resulting effective irreversibility means that it is unnecessary to explicitly break time symmetry. Spatial asymmetry alone is then sufficient to produce the ratchet effect, even in the absence of interactions, and although the system remains completely coherent.
Classical ratchet potentials, which alternate a driving potential with periodic random dissipative motion, can account for the operation of biological motors. We demonstrate the operation of a quantum ratchet, which differs from classical ratchets in that dissipative processes are absent within the observation time of the system (Hamiltonian regime). An atomic rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate is exposed to a sawtooth-like optical lattice potential, whose amplitude is periodically modulated in time. The ratchet transport arises from broken spatiotemporal symmetries of the driven potential, resulting in a desymmetrization of transporting eigenstates (Floquet states). The full quantum character of the ratchet transport was demonstrated by the measured atomic current oscillating around a nonzero stationary value at longer observation times, resonances occurring at positions determined by the photon recoil, and dependence of the transport current on the initial phase of the driving potential.
We demonstrate that directed transport of bright solitons formed in a quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate can be reliably controlled by tailoring a weak optical lattice potential, biharmonic in both space and time, in accordance with the degree of symmetry breaking mechanism. By considering the regime where matter-wave solitons are narrow compared to the lattice period, (i) we propose an analytical estimate for the dependence of the directed soliton current on the biharmonic potential parameters that is in good agreement with numerical experiments, and (ii) we show that the dependence of the directed soliton current on the number of atoms is a consequence of the ratchet universality.
We study the response of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in a δ-kicked optical lattice ratchet potential, with δ-kicked interactions, at quantum resonances. Our results reveal a strong dependency on the kicking strength K and the interaction parameter g˜. A critical curve in the (K,g˜)-space separating quasi-periodicity from full chaos shows that full chaos can be easily achieved for stronger interactions. In the full chaos regime, large currents including current reversals are generated and the current spectrum symmetry is broken. Outside the stability window, |g˜|≤1, the directed transport is no longer guaranteed. Experiments are possible thanks to recent progress in optical lattices and the possibility of time-modulating Feshbach-resonance.
We study the rectification process of interacting quantum particles in a periodic potential exposed to the action of an external ac driving. The breaking of spatio-temporal symmetries leads to directed motion even in the absence of interactions. A hallmark of quantum ratcheting is the appearance of resonant enhancement of the current (Denisov et al 2007 Europhys. Lett. 79 10007; Denisov et al 2007 Phys. Rev. A 75 063424). Here, we study the fate of these resonances within a Gross–Pitaevskii equation which describes a mean field interaction between many particles. We find that the resonance (i) is not destroyed by interactions, (ii) shifts its location with increasing interaction strength. We trace the Floquet states of the linear equations into the nonlinear domain, and show that the resonance gives rise to an instability and thus to the appearance of new nonlinear Floquet states, whose transport properties differ strongly as compared to the case of noninteracting particles.