Hannover 2010 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 9: Ultracold Atoms: Rydberg Gases / Miscellaneous (with A)

Q 9.6: Talk

Monday, March 8, 2010, 18:00–18:15, A 320

Occupation statistics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a driven double-well potential — •Moritz Hiller¹, Katrina Smith-Mannschott^2,3, Maya Chuchem⁴, Tsampikos Kottos², and Doron Cohen⁴ — ¹Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg — ²Department of Physics, Wesleyan University, CT, USA — ³MPI für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, Bunsenstraße 10, 37073 Göttingen — ⁴Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel

We consider the occupation statistics P_t(n) of a Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of N particles loaded in a double-well trap with inter-site coupling K. Two dynamical scenarios are investigated: a) wave-packet dynamics and b) linear variation of the bias between the on-site energies of the two wells. In the latter case, we resolve three different behaviors as we increase the driving rate for intermediate values of the inter-atomic interaction K/N < U < N K: quantum adiabatic, diabatic, and sudden regime. We find that during the adiabatic to diabatic crossover, many-body Landau-Zener transitions play a dominant role, resulting in oscillations of the second moment of the occupation statistics. In contrast, the crossover to the sudden regime is characterized by a broad distribution P_t→∞(n) which is reflected in a global maximum of its second moment.