Nonlinear resonant tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in tilted optical lattices

Abstract

We study the tunneling decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate from tilted optical lattices within the mean-field approximation. We introduce a method to calculate ground and excited resonance eigenstates of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, based on a grid relaxation procedure with complex absorbing potentials. This algorithm works efficiently in a wide range of parameters where established methods fail. It allows us to study the effects of the nonlinearity in detail in the regime of resonant tunneling, where the decay rate is enhanced by resonant coupling to excited unstable states.