The effects of trap-confinement and interatomic interactions on Josephson effects and macroscopic quantum self-trapping for a Bose–Einstein condensate

Abstract

We theoretically study the effects of trap-confinement and interatomic interactions on Josephson oscillations (JO) and macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST) for a Bose–Einstein condensate confined in a trap which has a symmetric double-well potential along z-axis and 2D harmonic potentials along x- and y-axis. We consider three types of model interaction potentials: contact, long-range dipolar and finite-range potentials. Our results show that by changing the aspect ratio between the axial and radial trap sizes, one can induce a transition from JO to MQST for contact interactions with a small scattering length. For long-range dipolar interatomic interactions, we analyze transition from Rabi to Josephson regime and Josephson to MQST regime by changing the aspect ratio of the trap for a particular dipolar orientation. For a finite-range interaction, we study the effects of relatively large scattering length and effective range on JO and MQST. We show that JO and MQST are possible even if scattering length is relatively large, particularly near a narrow Feshbach resonance due to the finite-range effects.