Nondissipative drag of superflow in a two-component Bose gas

Abstract

A microscopic theory of a non-dissipative drag in a two-component superfluid Bose gas is developed. The expression for the drag current in the system with the components of different atomic masses, densities and scattering lengths is derived. It is shown that the drag current is proportional to the square root of the gas parameter. The temperature dependence of the drag current is studied and it is shown that at temperature of order or smaller than the interaction energy the temperature reduction of the drag current is rather small. A possible way of measuring the drag factor is proposed. A toroidal system with the drag component confined in two half-ring wells separated by two Josephson barriers is considered. Under certain condition such a system can be treated as a Bose-Einstein counterpart of the Josephson charge qubit in an external magnetic field. It is shown that the measurement of the difference of number of atoms in two wells under a controlled evolution of the state of the qubit allows to determine the drag factor.