QUANTUM CORRECTIONS TO THE DYNAMICS OF THE BOSE–EINSTEIN CONDENSATE IN A DOUBLE-WELL POTENTIAL

Abstract

The dynamics of the Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in a double-well potential is often investigated under the mean-field theory (MFT). This works successfully for large particle numbers with dynamical stability. But for dynamical instabilities, quantum corrections to the MFT becomes important [J. R. Anglin and A. Vardi, Phys. Rev. A64, 013605 (2001)]. Recently the adiabatic dynamics of the double-well BEC is investigated under the MFT in terms of a dark variable [C. Ottaviani et al., Phys. Rev. A81, 043621 (2010)], which generalizes the adiabatic passage techniques in quantum optics to the nonlinear matter-wave case. We give a fully quantized version of it using second-quantization and introduce new correction terms from higher order interactions beyond the on-site interaction, which are interactions between the tunneling particle and the particle in the well and interactions between the tunneling particles. If only the on-site interaction is considered, this reduces to the usual two-mode BEC.