Coherent macroscopic quantum tunneling in boson-fermion mixtures

Abstract

We show that the cold atom systems of simultaneously trapped Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's) and quantum degenerate fermionic atoms provide promising laboratories for the study of macroscopic quantum tunneling. Our theoretical studies reveal that the spatial extent of a small trapped BEC immersed in a Fermi sea can tunnel and coherently oscillate between the values of the separated and mixed configurations (the phases of the phase separation transition of BEC-fermion systems). We evaluate the period, amplitude and dissipation rate for ${}^{23}$Na and ${}^{40}$K-atoms and we discuss the experimental prospects for observing this phenomenon.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Coherent Quasiclassical Dynamics of a Persistent Current Qubit

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Stability of a BEC with Higher-order Interactions near a Feshbach Resonance
• Fermion-mediated interactions in a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate
• Universality in Ultra-Cold Few- and Many-Boson Systems
• Kinetics of the Phase Separation Transition in Cold-Atom Boson-Fermion Mixtures
• Quantum Nucleation and Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling in Cold-Atom Boson-Fermion Mixtures