Tunneling dynamics and band structures of three weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We study the tunneling dynamics and energy bands of three Bose-Einstein condensates which are coupled weakly with each other. The study is carried out with both the mean-filed model and the second-quantized model. The results from these two models are compared and found to agree with each other when the particle number is large. Without interaction, this system possesses a Dirac point in its energy band. This Dirac point is immediately destroyed and develops into a loop structure with arbitrary small interaction. This loop structure has a strong effect on the tunneling dynamics. We find that the tunneling dynamics in this system is very sensitive to the system parameter, e.g., the interaction strength. This sensitivity is found to be caused by the chaos in the mean-field model and the avoided energy crossings with tiny gaps in the second-quantized model. This result gives a certain indication on how the classical dynamics and quantum dynamics are connected in the semi-classical limit. Our mean-field results are also valid for three mutually coupled optical nonlinear waveguides.