Modulated trapping of interacting bosons in one dimension

Abstract

We investigate the response of harmonically confined bosons with contact interactions (trapped Lieb-Liniger gas) to modulations of the trapping strength. We explain the structure of resonances at a series of driving frequencies, where size oscillations and energy grow exponentially. For strong interactions (Tonks-Girardeau gas), we show the effect of resonant driving on the bosonic momentum distribution. The treatment is `exact' for zero and infinite interactions, where the dynamics is captured by a single-variable ordinary differential equation. For finite interactions the system is no longer exactly solvable. For weak interactions, we show how interactions modify the resonant behavior for weak and strong driving, using a variational approximation which adds interactions to the single-variable description in a controlled way.