Spinor condensate persistent currents in an atomtronic Josephson necklace

Abstract

The investigation of superflow in multi-junction Josephson circuits is currently a leading frontier of physics research, probing the fundamental manifestations of macroscopic phase coherence and enabling applications to quantum simulation, metrology and computing. In this work, we extensively investigate the stability and dynamics of persistent currents of a spinor atomic Bose-Einstein condensate on a ring with multiple Josephson junctions. Specifically, we examine the effects of positive and negative interspecies interactions, co- and counter-rotation, population and Manakov asymmetry, as well as Rabi coupling on the persistent currents carried by the two components. Our analysis reveals that the presence of a second species offers multiple mechanisms for unprecedented manipulation of supercurrents on the ring, including phase-slip engineering, stability control, current-inversion switching and supercurrent pumping. Our study provides a roadmap for the engineering of persistent currents in binary ring condensates in necklace potentials, with significant implications for atomtronics, matter-wave interferometry and sensing using atomic Bose gases.