Bose-Einstein condensates on slightly asymmetric double-well potentials

Abstract

An analytical insight into the symmetry-breaking mechanisms underlying the transition from Josephson to self-trapping regimes in Bose-Einstein condensates is presented. We obtain expressions for the ground-state properties of the system of a gas of attractive bosons modeled by a two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with an external bias. Simple formulas are found relating the appearance of fragmentation in the condensate with the large quantum fluctuations of the population imbalance occurring in the transition from the Josephson to the self-trapped regime.