English

Soliton dynamics of an atomic spinor condensate on a Ring Lattice

Quantum Gases 2015-06-12 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study the dynamics of macroscopically-coherent matter waves of an ultra-cold atomic spin-one or spinor condensate on a ring lattice of six sites and demonstrate a novel type of spatio-temporal internal Josephson effect. Using a discrete solitary mode of uncoupled spin components as an initial condition, the time evolution of this many-body system is found to be characterized by two dominant frequencies leading to quasiperiodic dynamics at various sites. The dynamics of spatially-averaged and spin-averaged degrees of freedom, however, is periodic enabling an unique identification of the two frequencies. By increasing the spin-dependent atom-atom interaction strength we observe a resonance state, where the ratio of the two frequencies is a characteristic integer multiple and the spin-and-spatial degrees of freedom oscillate in "unison". Crucially, this resonant state is found to signal the onset to chaotic dynamics characterized by a broad band spectrum. In a ferromagnetic spinor condensate with attractive spin-dependent interactions, the resonance is accompanied by a transition from oscillatory- to rotational-type dynamics as the time evolution of the relative phase of the matter wave of the individual spin projections changes from bounded to unbounded.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1301.5851,
  title  = {Soliton dynamics of an atomic spinor condensate on a Ring Lattice},
  author = {Indubala I Satija and Carlos L. Pando and Eite Tiesinga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.5851},
  year   = {2015}
}