Engineering mesoscopic superpositions of superfluid flow

Abstract

Modeling strongly correlated atoms demonstrates the possibility to prepare quantum superpositions that are robust against experimental imperfections and temperature. Such superpositions of vortex states are formed by adiabatic manipulation of interacting ultracold atoms confined to a one-dimensional ring trapping potential when stirred by a barrier. Here, we discuss the influence of non-ideal experimental procedures and finite temperature. Adiabaticity conditions for changing the stirring rate reveal that superpositions of many atoms are most easily accessed in the strongly-interacting, Tonks-Girardeau, regime, which is also the most robust at finite temperature. NOON-type superpositions of weakly interacting atoms are most easily created by adiabatically decreasing the interaction strength by means of a Feshbach resonance. The quantum dynamics of small numbers of particles is simulated and the size of the superpositions is calculated based on their ability to make precision measurements. Experimental creation of strongly correlated and NOON-type superpositions with about 100 atoms seems feasible in the near future.

10 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms
• General framework for estimating the ultimate precision limit in noisy quantum-enhanced metrology
• Beating the Standard Quantum Limit with Four Entangled Photons
• Squeezing and entanglement in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Observation of persistent flow of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a toroidal trap
• Optimal Quantum Phase Estimation
• A Quantum-Enhanced Prototype Gravitational-Wave Detector
• A measurement-based measure of the size of macroscopic quantum superpositions
• Measuring the size of a Schroedinger cat state
• Macroscopic superpositions of superfluid flows
• Generation of macroscopic superposition states in ring superlattices
• Robust Mesoscopic Superposition of Strongly Correlated Ultracold Atoms
• Creation of macroscopic superpositions of flow states with Bose-Einstein condensates

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Experimental realization of Josephson junctions for an Atom SQUID
• Spin-Flipping Half Vortex in a Macroscopic Polariton Spinor Ring Condensate
• Nucleation in finite topological systems during continuous metastable quantum phase transitions
• Coherent Quantum Phase Slip in two-component bosonic Atomtronic Circuits
• Tunneling vortex dynamics in linearly coupled Bose-Hubbard rings
• Entanglement of condensed magnons via momentum-space fragmentation