Vortex macroscopic superpositions in ultracold bosons in a double-well potential

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files
3527.pdf(992.63 KB)
Published Version
Date
2015
Authors
Garcia-March, Miguel A.
Carr, Lincoln D.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Physical Society
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
We study macroscopic superpositions in the orbital rather than the spatial degrees of freedom, in a three-dimensional, double-well system. We show that the ensuing dynamics of N interacting excited ultracold bosons, which, in general, requires at least eight single-particle modes and ((N+7) (N)) Fock vectors, is described by a surprisingly small set of many-body states. An initial state with half the atoms in each well, and purposely excited in one of them, gives rise to the tunneling of axisymmetric and transverse vortex structures. We show that transverse vortices tunnel orders of magnitude faster than axisymmetric ones and are therefore more experimentally accessible. The tunneling process generates macroscopic superpositions only distinguishable by their orbital properties and within experimentally realistic times.
Description
Keywords
Bose-Einstein condensate , Optical lattices , States
Citation
Garcia-March, M. A. and Carr, L. D. (2015) 'Vortex macroscopic superpositions in ultracold bosons in a double-well potential', Physical Review A, 91(3), 033626 (9pp). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevA.91.033626
Copyright
© 2015, American Physical Society