Probing the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of two interacting atoms

Abstract

We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of two interacting atoms in a one-dimensional harmonic trap after a quench by a tightly pinned impurity atom. We make use of an approximate variational calculation called the Lagrange-mesh method to solve the Schrödinger equation as a function of inter-particle interaction and impurity quench strength. We investigate the out-of-equilibrium dynamics by calculating the Loschmidt echo which quantifies the irreversibility of the system following the quench, while its probability distribution after long times can be used to identify distinct dynamical regimes. These quantities are related to the spectral function which describes the full dynamical spectrum, and we show through a thorough examination of the parameter space the existence of distinct scattering states and collective oscillations. This work demonstrates how these dynamics are strongly dependent on the interaction strength between the atoms and may be tuned to reach the orthogonality catastrophe in few-body systems.

10 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Few-body Bose gases in low dimensions -- a laboratory for quantum dynamics
• Criticality revealed through quench dynamics the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model
• Probing the edge between integrability and quantum chaos in interacting few-atom systems
• Breathing dynamics of the Bose polaron in a species-selective harmonic trap
• Arbitrary interaction quench phenomena in harmonically trapped two-body systems
• Nonequilibrium many-body dynamics in supersymmetric quenching