No Arabic abstract
The time it takes a quantum system to complete a tunneling event (which in the case of cross-barrier tunneling can be viewed as the time spent in a classically forbidden area) is related to the time required for a state to evolve to an orthogonal state, and an observation, i.e., a quantum mechanical projection on a particular basis, is required to distinguish one state from another. We have performed time-resolved measurements of Landau-Zener tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in accelerated optical lattices, clearly resolving the steplike time dependence of the band populations. The use of different protocols enabled us to access the tunneling probability, in two different bases, namely, the adiabatic basis and the diabatic basis. The adiabatic basis corresponds to the eigenstates of the lattice, and the diabatic one to the freeparticle momentum eigenstates. Our findings pave the way towards more quantitative studies of the tunneling time for LZ transitions, which are of current interest in the context of optimal quantum control and the quantum speed limit.
Tunneling of a quasibound state is a non-smooth process in the entangled many-body case. Using time-evolving block decimation, we show that repulsive (attractive) interactions speed up (slow down) tunneling, which occurs in bursts. While the escape time scales exponentially with small interactions, the maximization time of the von Neumann entanglement entropy between the remaining quasibound and escaped atoms scales quadratically. Stronger interactions require higher order corrections. Entanglement entropy is maximized when about half the atoms have escaped.
Motivated by a goal of realizing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) beyond one-dimension (1D), we propose and analyze a method to generate an effective 2D SOC in bilayer BECs with laser-assisted inter-layer tunneling. We show that an interplay between the inter-layer tunneling, SOC and intra-layer atomic interaction can give rise to diverse ground state configurations. In particular, the system undergoes a transition to a new type of stripe phase which spontaneously breaks the time-reversal symmetry. Different from the ordinary Rashba-type SOC, a fractionalized skyrmion lattice emerges spontaneously in the bilayer system without external traps. Furthermore, we predict the occurrence of a tetracritical point in the phase diagram of the bilayer BECs, where four different phases merge together. The origin of the emerging different phases is elucidated.
We study tunneling processes of Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) on the real time stochastic approach and reveal some properties of their tunneling time. An important result is that the tunneling time decreases as the repulsive interatomic interaction becomes stronger. Furthermore, the tunneling time in a strong interaction region is not much affected by the potential height and is represented by an almost constant function. We also obtain the other related times such as the hesitating and interaction ones and investigate their dependence on the interaction strength. Finally, we calculate the mean arrival time of BEC wave packet and show the large displacement of its peak position.
The problem of understanding how a coherent, macroscopic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) emerges from the cooling of a thermal Bose gas has attracted significant theoretical and experimental interest over several decades. The pioneering achievement of BEC in weakly-interacting dilute atomic gases in 1995 was followed by a number of experimental studies examining the growth of the BEC number, as well as the development of its coherence. More recently there has been interest in connecting such experiments to universal aspects of nonequilibrium phase transitions, in terms of both static and dynamical critical exponents. Here, the spontaneous formation of topological structures such as vortices and solitons in quenched cold-atom experiments has enabled the verification of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicting the density of topological defects in continuous phase transitions, first proposed in the context of the evolution of the early universe. This chapter reviews progress in the understanding of BEC formation, and discusses open questions and future research directions in the dynamics of phase transitions in quantum gases.
We demonstrate a new way to extend the coherence time of separated Bose-Einstein condensates that involves immersion into a superfluid bath. When both the system and the bath have similar scattering lengths, immersion in a superfluid bath cancels out inhomogeneous potentials either imposed by external fields or inherent in density fluctuations due to atomic shot noise. This effect, which we call superfluid shielding, allows for coherence lifetimes beyond the projection noise limit. We probe the coherence between separated condensates in different sites of an optical lattice by monitoring the contrast and decay of Bloch oscillations. Our technique demonstrates a new way that interactions can improve the performance of quantum devices.