Manipulation of an elongated internal Josephson junction of bosonic atoms

Abstract

We report on the experimental characterization of a spatially extended Josephson junction realized with a coherently-coupled two-spin-component Bose-Einstein condensate. The cloud is trapped in an elongated potential such that that transverse spin excitations are frozen. We extract the non-linear parameter with three different manipulation protocols. The outcomes are all consistent with a simple local density approximation of the spin hydrodynamics, i.e., of the so-called Bose-Josephson junction equations. We also identify a method to produce states with a well defined uniform magnetization.

8 pages, 4 figures