Classical bifurcation at the transition from Rabi to Josephson dynamics

Abstract

We report on the experimental realization of an internal bosonic Josephson junction in a Rubidium spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. The measurement of the full time dynamics in phase space allows the characterization of the theoretically predicted $\pi$-phase modes and quantitatively confirms analytical predictions, revealing a classical bifurcation. Our results suggest that this system is a model system which can be tuned from classical to the quantum regime and thus is an important step towards the experimental investigation of entanglement generation close to critical points.