Dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a symmetric triple-well trap

Abstract

We present a complete analysis of the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a symmetric triple-well potential. Our classical analogue treatment, based on a time-dependent variational method using SU(3) coherent states, includes the parameter dependence analysis of the equilibrium points and their local stability, which is closely related to the condensate collective behaviour. We also consider the effects of off-site interactions, and how these "cross-collisions" may become relevant for a large number of trapped bosons. Besides, we have shown analytically, by means of a simple basis transformation in the single-particle space, that an integrable sub-regime, known as twin-condensate dynamics, corresponds in the classical phase space to invariant surfaces isomorphic to the unit sphere. However, the quantum dynamics preserves the twin-condensate defining characteristics only partially, thus breaking the invariance of the associated quantum subspace. Moreover, the periodic geometry of the trapping potential allowed us to investigate the dynamics of finite angular momentum collective excitations, which can be suppressed by the emergence of chaos. Finally, using the generalized purity associated to the su(3) algebra, we were able to quantify the dynamical classicality of a quantum evolved system, as compared to the corresponding classical trajectory.

22 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Josephson Oscillation and Transition to Self-Trapping for Bose-Einstein-Condensates in a Triple-Well Trap
• Beyond mean-field dynamics of small Bose-Hubbard systems based on the number-conserving phase space approach
• Exact number conserving phase-space dynamics of the M-site Bose-Hubbard model
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• Semiclassical quantization of the Bogoliubov spectrum
• Phase Transition, Entanglement and Squeezing in a Triple-Well Condensate
• Control of unstable macroscopic oscillations in the dynamics of three coupled Bose condensates
• Generalized Purity and Quantum Phase Transition for Bose-Einstein condensates in a Symmetric Double Well
• Persistence of mean-field features in the energy spectrum of small arrays of Bose-Einstein condensates

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Minimal Fokker-Planck theory for the thermalization of mesoscopic subsystems
• Fragmented condensation in Bose-Hubbard trimers with tunable tunnelling
• Bose-Hubbard model in a ring-shaped optical lattice with high filling factors
• Tunneling dynamics in exactly-solvable models with triple-well potentials
• Initial value representation for the SU(n) semiclassical propagator
• Dynamical effects of exchange symmetry breaking in mixtures of interacting bosons