We study the dynamics of a two-mode Bose-Einstein condensate in the vicinity of a mean-field dynamical instability. Convergence to mean-field theory (MFT), with increasing total number of particles N, is shown to be logarithmically slow. Using a density-matrix formalism rather than the conventional wave-function methods, we derive an improved set of equations of motion for the mean-field plus the fluctuations, which goes beyond MFT and provides accurate predictions for the leading quantum corrections and the quantum break time. We show that the leading quantum corrections appear as decoherence of the reduced single-particle quantum state; we also compare this phenomenon to the effects of thermal noise. Using the rapid dephasing near an instability, we propose a method for the direct measurement of scattering lengths.
The dynamics of the Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a double-well potential is often investigated under the mean-field theory (MFT). This works successfully for large particle numbers with dynamical stability. But for dynamical instabilities, quantum corrections to the MFT becomes important [J. R. Anglin and A. Vardi, Phys. Rev. A64, 013605 (2001)]. Recently the adiabatic dynamics of the double-well BEC is investigated under the MFT in terms of a dark variable [C. Ottaviani et al., Phys. Rev. A81, 043621 (2010)], which generalizes the adiabatic passage techniques in quantum optics to the nonlinear matter-wave case. We give a fully quantized version of it using second-quantization and introduce new correction terms from higher order interactions beyond the on-site interaction, which are interactions between the tunneling particle and the particle in the well and interactions between the tunneling particles. If only the on-site interaction is considered, this reduces to the usual two-mode BEC.
We study stationary quantum fluctuations around a mean field limit in trapped, dilute atomic gases of repulsively interacting bosons at zero temperature. Our goal is to describe quantum-mechanically the lowest macroscopic many-body bound state consistent with a microscopic Hamiltonian that accounts for inhomogeneous particle scattering processes. In the mean field limit, the wave function of the condensate (macroscopic quantum state) satisfies a defocusing cubic nonlinear Schrödinger-type equation, the Gross–Pitaevskii equation. We include consequences of pair excitation, i.e., the scattering of particles in pairs from the condensate to other states, proposed in [T. T. Wu, J. Math. Phys., 2 (1961), pp. 105–123]. Our derivations rely on an uncontrolled yet physically motivated assumption for the many-body wave function. By relaxing mathematical rigor, from a particle Hamiltonian with a spatially varying interaction strength we derive via heuristics an integro–partial differential equation for the pair collision kernel, K, under a stationary condensate wave function,
Φ. For a scattering length with periodic microstructure of subscale
ϵ, we formally describe via classical homogenization the lowest many-body bound state in terms of
Φ and K up to second order in
ϵ. If the external potential is slowly varying, we solve the homogenized equations via boundary layer theory. As an application, we describe the partial depletion of the condensate.
The unstable mean-field dynamics of a Bose gas is shown to break down at time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{h}=({c}_{1}/\ensuremath{\gamma})lnN$, where $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ is the Lyapunov exponent of the mean-field theory,
N is the number of bosons, and
c1 is a system-dependent constant. The breakdown time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{h}$ is essentially the Ehrenfest time that characterizes the breakdown of the correspondence between classical and quantum dynamics. This breakdown can be well described by a quantum fidelity defined for one-particle reduced density matrices. Our results are obtained with the formalism in particle-number phase space and are illustrated with a triple-well model. The logarithmic quantum-classical correspondence time may be verified experimentally with Bose-Einstein condensates.
In this paper, with the full field operator expressed in terms of a particle-number-conserving mean-field ansatz, we investigate the dynamical behaviour of Bose–Einstein condensates from microscopic physics. Including the first-order term correction from single-particle excitation and the remaining higher-order term correction from collective excitations simultaneously, we obtain the formulation for a closed local expression of quantum backreaction Q , and discuss the influence on static Bose–Einstein condensates. Even though the quantum backreaction is small, it still has some influence on its dynamics.
We discuss the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in a double-well potential subject to decoherence (or particle loss). Starting from the full many-body dynamics described by the master equation, an effective Gross-Pitaevskii-like equation is derived in the mean-field approximation. By numerically solving the GP equation, we find that macroscopic quantum self-trapping disappears for strong decoherence, while generalized self-trapping occurs under weak decoherence. The fixed points have been calculated, and we find that an abrupt change from elliptic to an attractor and a repeller occurs, reflecting the metastable behavior of the system around these points.