No Arabic abstract
We report the creation of a pair of Josephson junctions on a toroidal dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a configuration that is the cold atom analog of the well-known dc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). We observe Josephson effects, measure the critical current of the junctions, and find dynamic behavior that is in good agreement with the simple Josephson equations for a tunnel junction with the ideal sinusoidal current-phase relation expected for the parameters of the experiment. The junctions and toroidal trap are created with the painted potential, a time-averaged optical dipole potential technique which will allow scaling to more complex BEC circuit geometries than the single atom-SQUID case reported here. Since rotation plays the same role in the atom SQUID as magnetic field does in the dc SQUID magnetometer, the device has potential as a compact rotation sensor.
We extend a recent method to shortcut the adiabatic following to internal bosonic Josephson junctions in which the control parameter is the linear coupling between the modes. The approach is based on the mapping between the two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian and a 1D effective Schrodinger-like equation, valid in the large $N$ (number of particles) limit. Our method can be readily implemented in current internal bosonic Josephson junctions and it improves substantially the production of spin-squeezing with respect to usually employed linear rampings.
We analyze the formation of squeezed states in a condensate of ultracold bosonic atoms confined by a double-well potential. The emphasis is set on the dynamical formation of such states from initially coherent many-body quantum states. Two cases are described: the squeezing formation in the evolution of the system around the stable point, and in the short time evolution in the vicinity of an unstable point. The latter is shown to produce highly squeezed states on very short times. On the basis of a semiclassical approximation to the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we are able to predict the amount of squeezing, its scaling with $N$ and the speed of coherent spin formation with simple analytical formulas which successfully describe the numerical Bose-Hubbard results. This new method of producing highly squeezed spin states in systems of ultracold atoms is compared to other standard methods in the literature.
We analyze the effects of the temperature on a bosonic Josephson junction realized with ultracold and dilute atoms in a double-well potential. Starting from the eigenstates of the two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we calculate the coherence visibility and the fluctuation of the on-site occupation number and study them as functions of the temperature. We show that, contrary to naive expectations, when the boson-boson interaction is suitably chosen thermal effects can increase the coherence visibility and reduce the on-site number fluctuation.
The concept of valence bond resonance plays a fundamental role in the theory of the chemical bond and is believed to lie at the heart of many-body quantum physical phenomena. Here we show direct experimental evidence of a time-resolved valence bond quantum resonance with ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. By means of a superlattice structure we create a three-dimensional array of independent four-site plaquettes, which we can fully control and manipulate in parallel. Moreover, we show how small-scale plaquette resonating valence bond states with s- and d-wave symmetry can be created and characterized. We anticipate our findings to open the path towards the creation and analysis of many-body RVB states in ultracold atomic gases.
We analyze phase interferometry realized with a bosonic Josephson junction made of trapped dilute and ultracold atoms. By using a suitable phase sensitivity indicator we study the zero temperature junction states useful to achieve sub shot-noise precisions. Sub shot-noise phase shift sensitivities can be reached even at finite temperature under a suitable choice of the junction state. We infer a scaling law in terms of the size system (that is, the number of particles) for the temperature at which the shot-noise limit is not overcome anymore