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Role of excited states in the splitting dynamics of interacting Bose-Einstein condensates when ramping-up a barrier

Alexej I. Streltsov, Ofir E. Alon, Lorenz S. Cederbaum

cond-mat.otherarXiv:cond-mat/0612616

Abstract

An essentially-exact approach to compute the wavefunction in the time-dependent many-boson Schrödinger equation is derived and employed to study accurately the process of splitting a trapped condensate when ramping-up a barrier such that a double-well is formed. We follow the role played by many-body excited states during the splitting process. Among others, a 'counter-intuitive' regime is found in which the evolution of the condensate when the barrier is ramped-up sufficiently slow is not to the ground-state which is a fragmented condensate, but to a low-lying excited-state which is a coherent condensate. Experimental implications are discussed.

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