Macroscopic quantum escape of Bose-Einstein condensates: Analysis of experimentally realizable quasi-one-dimensional traps

Diego A. Alcala, Gregor Urban, Matthias Weidemüller, and Lincoln D. Carr
Phys. Rev. A 98, 023619 – Published 15 August 2018

Abstract

The variational JWKB method is used to determine experimentally accessible macroscopic quantum tunneling regimes of quasibound Bose-Einstein condensates in two quasi-one-dimensional trap configurations. The potentials can be created by magnetic and optical traps: a symmetric trap from two offset Gaussian barriers and a tilt trap from a linear gradient and Gaussian barrier. Scaling laws in barrier parameters, ranging from inverse polynomial to square root times exponential, are calculated and used to elucidate different dynamical regimes, such as when classical oscillations dominate tunneling rates in the symmetric trap. The symmetric trap is found to be versatile, with tunneling times at and below 1 s, able to hold 103104 atoms, and realizable for atoms ranging from rubidium to lithium, with unadjusted scattering lengths. The tilt trap produces subsecond tunneling times, is able to hold a few hundred atoms of lighter elements such as lithium, and requires the use of Feshbach resonance to reduce scattering lengths. To explore a large parameter space, an extended Gaussian variational ansatz is used, which can approximate large traps with Thomas-Fermi profiles. Nonlinear interactions in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation are shown to produce additional effective mean-field barriers, affecting scaling laws.

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  • Received 13 May 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.023619

©2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Diego A. Alcala1, Gregor Urban2, Matthias Weidemüller2,3, and Lincoln D. Carr1,2

  • 1Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois Street, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA
  • 2Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 226, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
  • 3Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Shanghai Branch, and CAS Center for Excellence and Synergetic Innovation Center in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Shanghai 201315, China

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Vol. 98, Iss. 2 — August 2018

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