Universality of fragmentation in the Schrödinger dynamics of bosonic Josephson junctions

Kaspar Sakmann, Alexej I. Streltsov, Ofir E. Alon, and Lorenz S. Cederbaum
Phys. Rev. A 89, 023602 – Published 5 February 2014

Abstract

The many-body Schrödinger dynamics of a one-dimensional bosonic Josephson junction is investigated for up to 10 000 bosons and long times. The initial states are fully condensed and the interaction strength is weak. We report on a universal fragmentation dynamics on the many-body level: systems consisting of different numbers of particles fragment to the same value at constant mean-field interaction strength. The phenomenon manifests itself in observables such as the correlation functions of the system. We explain this universal fragmentation dynamics analytically based on the Bose-Hubbard model. We thereby show that the extent to which many-body effects become important at later times depends crucially on the initial state. Even for arbitrarily large particle numbers and arbitrarily weak interaction strength the dynamics is many-body in nature and the fragmentation universal. There is no weakly interacting limit where the Gross-Pitaevskii mean field is valid for long times.

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  • Received 4 July 2012
  • Revised 21 October 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.023602

©2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Kaspar Sakmann1,*, Alexej I. Streltsov2, Ofir E. Alon3, and Lorenz S. Cederbaum2

  • 1Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
  • 2Theoretische Chemie, Physikalisch-Chemisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
  • 3Department of Physics, University of Haifa at Oranim, Tivon 36006, Israel

  • *sakmann@stanford.edu

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Vol. 89, Iss. 2 — February 2014

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