Cyclotron dynamics of a Bose—Einstein condensate in a quadruple-well potential with synthetic gauge fields

Abstract

We investigate the cyclotron dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a quadruple-well potential with synthetic gauge fields. We use laser-assisted tunneling to generate large tunable effective magnetic fields for BEC. The mean position of BEC follows an orbit that simulated the cyclotron orbits of charged particles in a magnetic field. In the absence of atomic interaction, atom dynamics may exhibit periodic or quasi-periodic cyclotron orbits. In the presence of atomic interaction, the system may exhibit self-trapping, which depends on synthetic gauge fields and atomic interaction strength. In particular, the competition between synthetic gauge fields and atomic interaction leads to the generation of several discontinuous parameter windows for the transition to self-trapping, which is obviously different from that without synthetic gauge fields.