Mesoscopic quantum switching of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice governed by the parity of the number of atoms

Abstract

It is shown that for a $N$-boson system the parity of $N$ can be responsible for a qualitative difference in the system response to variation of a parameter. The nonlinear boson model is considered, which describes tunneling of boson pairs between two distinct modes $X_{1,2}$ of the same energy and applies to a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice. By varying the lattice depth one induces the parity-dependent quantum switching, i.e. $X_1\to X_2$ for even $N$ and $X_1\to X_1$ for odd $N$, for arbitrarily large $N$. A simple scheme is proposed for observation of the parity effect on the \textit{mesoscopic scale} by using the bounce switching regime, which is insensitive to the initial state preparation (as long as only one of the two $X_l$ modes is significantly populated), stable under small perturbations and requires an experimentally accessible coherence time.

Added the discussion of stability of the parity effect under small perturbations and the inhomogeneity of the lattice; 4 pages, 3 figures in color

References in corpus (9)

• Repulsively bound atom pairs in an optical lattice
• Direct Observation of Second Order Atom Tunnelling
• Few-boson dynamics in double wells: From single-atom to correlated-pair tunneling
• Differences between mean-field dynamics and N-particle quantum dynamics as a signature of entanglement
• Tunneling dynamics of few bosons in a double well
• Lifshitz-like transition and enhancement of correlations in a rotating bosonic ring lattice
• Nonlinear tunneling of BEC in an optical lattice: signatures of quantum collapse and revival
• Quantum switching at a mean-field instability of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice
• Nonlinear intraband tunneling of BEC in a cubic three-dimensional lattice

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Complex and real unconventional Bose-Einstein condensations in high orbital bands
• The three-site Bose-Hubbard model subject to atom losses: the boson-pair dissipation channel and failure of the mean-field approach
• State diagram and the phase transition of $p$-bosons in a square bi-partite optical lattice