Reversal of the circulation of a vortex by quantum tunneling in trapped Bose systems

Abstract

We study the quantum dynamics of a model for a vortex in a Bose gas with repulsive interactions in an anisotropic, harmonic trap. By solving the Schrödinger equation numerically, we show that the circulation of the vortex can undergo periodic reversals by quantum-mechanical tunneling. With increasing interaction strength or particle number, vortices become increasingly stable, and the period for reversals increases. Tunneling between vortex and antivortex states is shown to be described to a good approximation by a superposition of vortex and antivortex states (a Schrödinger cat state), rather than the mean-field state, and we derive an analytical expression for the oscillation period. The problem is shown to be equivalent to that of the two-site Bose Hubbard model with attractive interactions.

5 pages, 5 figures; published in Phys. Rev. A, Rapid Communications

References in corpus (3)

• Imaging the Mott Insulator Shells using Atomic Clock Shifts
• Formation of spatial shell structures in the superfluid to Mott insulator transition
• A measurement-based measure of the size of macroscopic quantum superpositions

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• Stability of excited states of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an anharmonic trap
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• Floquet analysis of the modulated two-mode Bose-Hubbard model
• Vortex Dynamics in Anisotropic Traps
• Few-to-many vortex states of density-angular-momentum coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Vortical Quantum Memory