Soliton dynamics of an atomic spinor condensate on a Ring Lattice

Abstract

We study the dynamics of macroscopically-coherent matter waves of an ultra-cold atomic spin-one or spinor condensate on a ring lattice of six sites and demonstrate a novel type of spatio-temporal internal Josephson effect. Using a discrete solitary mode of uncoupled spin components as an initial condition, the time evolution of this many-body system is found to be characterized by two dominant frequencies leading to quasiperiodic dynamics at various sites. The dynamics of spatially-averaged and spin-averaged degrees of freedom, however, is periodic enabling an unique identification of the two frequencies. By increasing the spin-dependent atom-atom interaction strength we observe a resonance state, where the ratio of the two frequencies is a characteristic integer multiple and the spin-and-spatial degrees of freedom oscillate in "unison". Crucially, this resonant state is found to signal the onset to chaotic dynamics characterized by a broad band spectrum. In a ferromagnetic spinor condensate with attractive spin-dependent interactions, the resonance is accompanied by a transition from oscillatory- to rotational-type dynamics as the time evolution of the relative phase of the matter wave of the individual spin projections changes from bounded to unbounded.

References in corpus (9)

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Criticality and Spin Squeezing in the Rotational Dynamics of a BEC on a Ring Lattice
• Effects of a rotating periodic lattice on coherent quantum states in a ring topology: The case of positive nonlinearity
• Phase-space mixing in dynamically unstable, integrable few-mode quantum systems
• Rotation Sensitive Quench and Revival of Coherent Oscillations in a Ring Lattice
• Entangled Collective Spin States of Two Species Ultracold atoms in a Ring