Collective excitations and tunneling dynamics in long bosonic Josephson junctions

Abstract

We investigate the low-energy dynamics of two coupled anisotropic Bose-Einstein condensates forming a long Josephson junction. The theoretical study is performed in the framework of the two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism. We analyze the excitation spectrum of the coupled Bose condensates and show how low-energy excitations of the condensates lead to multiple-frequency oscillations of the atomic populations in the two wells. This analysis generalizes the standard bosnic Josephson euqation approach. We also develop a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model of the coupled condensates, that is capable to reproduce the excitation spectrum and population dynamics of the system.