Time-dependent Hartree Method For Bosons Research Articles

Effect of zero-point motion on properties of quantum particles adsorbed on a substrate

We qualitatively investigate the effect of zero-point motion (ZPM) on the structure and properties of a film composed of quantum particles adsorbed on a graphite substrate. The amplitude of ZPM is controlled by a change of the particle mass while keeping the interactions fixed. In that sense it is assumed that the interactions can be controlled by future doping methods. The worm-algorithm path integral Monte Carlo (WAPIMC) method is applied to simulate this system in the grand-canonical ensemble, where particles can be exchanged with the external particle reservoir. Another method, namely the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons is additionally applied to verify some of the WAPIMC results and to provide further information on the entropy and the condensate fraction. Several important findings are reported. It is found that ZPM plays an important role in defining order and disorder in the crystalline structure of the adsorbed film. The total energy of the film drops with a reduction in the amplitude of ZPM, that is, it becomes more negative which is an indication to stronger adsorption. For a few particle numbers, a significant condensate fraction is detected that however drops sharply at critical values of the ZPM amplitude. Most importantly, a connection is established between chaos, in coordinate as well as momentum space, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The importance of the present study lies in the fact that adsorbed two-dimensional films serve as an excellent experimental testbed for demonstrating low-dimensional quantum phenomena in the ground state. The present examination contributes also to a further understanding of the properties of heavy quantum particles adsorbed on substrates.

Fragmentation and correlations in a rotating Bose–Einstein condensate undergoing breakup

The theoretical investigation of rotating Bose–Einstein condensates has mainly focused on the emergence of quantum vortex states and the condensed properties of such systems. In the present work, we concentrate on other facets by examining the impact of rotation on the ground state of weakly interacting bosons confined in anharmonic potentials computed both at the mean-field level and particularly at the many-body level of theory. For the many-body computations, we employ the well-established many-body method known as the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. We present how various degrees of fragmentation can be generated following the breakup of the ground state densities in anharmonic traps without ramping up a potential barrier for strong rotations. The breakup of the densities is found to be associated with the acquisition of angular momentum in the condensate due to the rotation. In addition to fragmentation, the presence of many-body correlations is examined by computing the variances of the many-particle position and momentum operators. For strong rotations, the many-body variances become smaller than their mean-field counterparts, and one even finds a scenario with opposite anisotropies of the mean-field and many-body variances. Further, it is observed that for higher discrete symmetric systems of order k, namely three-fold and four-fold symmetry, breakup to k sub-clouds and emergence of k-fold fragmentation take place. All in all, we provide a thorough many-body investigation of how and which correlations build up when a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate breaks up under rotation.

Unpredictable condensate–depletion dynamics in one-dimensional power-law traps

The dynamic depletion of a trapped one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) that is driven by laser stirring is numerically explored using beyond mean-field methods. For this purpose, the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (Alon et al 2008 Phys. Rev. A 77 033613) is applied. In order to induce the depletion, the BEC is excited by a negative Gaussian potential (dimple) whose depth is modulated with time. The BEC is examined in various trapping geometries, with different interactions, and the condensate depletion is recorded as a function of time. A general power–law trap is considered that can be experimentally generated and shaped by the holographic methods of Bruce et al (2011 Phys. Rev. A 84 053410). The chief goal is to explore the interplay between trapping geometry and interactions in defining the depletion dynamics. It is chiefly found, that the details of these depletion dynamics are unpredictable and determined by a combination of the principle dimple depth, trap, and interactions. One significant feature of this work is that quite a number of plateaus is reached in the aforementioned dynamics.

Bosonic quantum dynamics following colliding potential wells

We employ the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) in order to investigate the correlated non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of two bosons confined in two colliding and uniformly accelerated Gaussian wells. As the wells approach each other an effective, transient double-well structure is formed. This induces a transient and oscillatory over-barrier transport. We monitor both the amplitude of the intra-well dipole mode in the course of the dynamics as well as the final distribution of the particles between the two wells. For fast collisions we observe an emission process which we attribute to two distinct mechanisms. Energy transfer processes lead to an untrapped fraction of bosons and a resonant enhancement of the deconfinement for certain kinematic configurations can be observed. Despite the comparatively weak interaction strengths employed in this work, we identify strong inter-particle correlations by analyzing the corresponding Von Neumann entropy.

Spectral properties of a three-body atom-ion hybrid system

We consider a hybrid atom-ion system consisting of a pair of bosons interacting with a single ion in a quasi-one-dimensional trapping geometry. Building upon a model potential for the atom-ion interaction developed in earlier theoretical works, we investigate the behaviour of the low-energy eigenstates for varying contact interaction strength $g$ among the atoms. In particular, we contrast the two cases of a static and a mobile ion. Our study is carried out by means of the Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method for Bosons, a numerically-exact $\textit{ab initio}$ method for the efficient simulation of entangled mixtures. We find that repulsive atom interactions induce locally-distinct modifications of the atomic probability distribution unique to each eigenstate. Whilst the atoms on average separate from each other with increasing $g$, they do not necessarily separate from the ion. The mobility of the ion leads in general to greater separations among the atoms as well as between the atoms and the ion. Notably, we observe an exchange between the kinetic energy of the atoms and the atom-ion interaction energy for all eigenstates, which is both interaction- and mobility-induced. For the ground state, we provide an intuitive description by constructing an effective Hamiltonian for each species, which aptly captures the response of the atoms to the ion's mobility. Furthermore, the effective picture predicts enhanced localisation of the ion, in agreement with our results from exact numerical simulations.

Induced correlations between impurities in a one-dimensional quenched Bose gas

We explore the time evolution of two impurities in a trapped one-dimensional Bose gas that follows a change of the boson-impurity interaction. We study the induced impurity-impurity interactions and their effect on the quench dynamics. In particular, we report on the size of the impurity cloud, the impurity-impurity entanglement, and the impurity-impurity correlation function. The presented numerical simulations are based upon the variational multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. To analyze and quantify induced impurity-impurity correlations, we employ an effective two-body Hamiltonian with a contact interaction. We show that the effective model consistent with the mean-field attraction of two heavy impurities explains qualitatively our results for weak interactions. Our findings suggest that the quench dynamics in cold-atom systems can be a tool for studying impurity-impurity correlations.

Relaxation of Shannon entropy for trapped interacting bosons with dipolar interactions

We study the quantum many-body dynamics and entropy production triggered by an interaction quench of few dipolar bosons in an external harmonic trap. We solve the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation by using an in-principle numerically exact many-body method called the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). We study the dynamical measures with high level of accuracy. We monitor the time evolution of the occupation in the natural orbitals and normalized first- and second-order Glauber’s correlation functions. In particular, we focus on the relaxation dynamics of the Shannon entropy. Comparison with the corresponding results for contact interactions is presented. We observe significant effects coming from the presence of the non-local part of the dipolar interaction. The relaxation process is very fast for dipolar bosons with a clear signature of a truly saturated maximum entropy state. We also discuss the connection between the entropy production and the occurrence of correlations and loss of coherence in the system. We identify the long-time relaxed state as a many-body state retaining only diagonal correlations in the first-order correlation function and building up anti-bunching effect in the second-order correlation function.

Fidelity and Entropy Production in Quench Dynamics of Interacting Bosons in an Optical Lattice

We investigate the dynamics of a few bosons in an optical lattice induced by a quantum quench of a parameter of the many-body Hamiltonian. The evolution of the many-body wave function is obtained by solving the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation numerically, using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). We report the time evolution of three key quantities, namely, the occupations of the natural orbitals, that is, the eigenvalues of the one-body reduced density matrix, the many-body Shannon information entropy, and the quantum fidelity for a wide range of interactions. Our key motivation is to characterize relaxation processes where various observables of an isolated and interacting quantum many-body system dynamically converge to equilibrium values via the quantum fidelity and via the production of many-body entropy. The interaction, as a parameter, can induce a phase transition in the ground state of the system from a superfluid (SF) state to a Mott-insulator (MI) state. We show that, for a quench to a weak interaction, the fidelity remains close to unity and the entropy exhibits oscillations. Whereas for a quench to strong interactions (SF to MI transition), the relaxation process is characterized by the first collapse of the quantum fidelity and entropy saturation to an equilibrium value. The dip and the non-analytic nature of quantum fidelity is a hallmark of dynamical quantum phase transitions. We quantify the characteristic time at which the quantum fidelity collapses and the entropy saturates.

Probing relaxation dynamics of a few strongly correlated bosons in a 1D triple well optical lattice

The relaxation process of a few strongly interacting bosons in a triple well optical lattice is studied from the first principle using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. We report the contrasting response of the system under two independent quench processes: an interaction quench and a lattice depth quench. We analyze the evolution of the reduced one-body density matrix, two-body density and the Shannon information entropy for a wide range of lattice depth and interaction strength parameters. For the strong interaction quench, we observe a very fast relaxation to the steady state. In contrast, for the lattice depth quench, we observe collapse–revival dynamics in all the key measures. We also provide the best fitting formulas for relaxation and revival time which follow power law decay.

Tunneling Dynamics of interacting bosons in a quantum seesaw potential

We study the tunneling dynamics of N = 10 one-dimensional interacting bosons confined in a temporally driven double well potential that imitates a quantum seesaw and how we can manipulate these dynamics by changing the drive of the seesaw potential. We emulate the seesaw with a driven double well potential and consider two driving protocols: an harmonic constant-frequency drive and a chirped drive with linearly increasing frequency. We consider the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation of a repulsively interacting quasi-one-dimensional few-boson system. We solve it by using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) as implemented in the MCTDH-X software. For an harmonic drive and at small values of the driving amplitude, the dynamics of the particles become very slow rendering a stationary-like state. In a phase-space picture the population imbalance between the wells follows a trajectory which is restricted to a comparatively small region of space. For an harmonic drive at intermediate amplitudes, the dynamics become periodic in nature, implying that the bosons populate each of wells periodically. At comparatively large amplitudes of the harmonic drive, the dynamics show features of chaos in phase-space representation. For the chirped drive with a driving frequency increasing linearly in time, the imbalance of the atoms in the seesaw, however, has a temporal evolution that is faster for certain frequency ranges. The tunneling dynamics in such cases, for small amplitudes, show the appearance of quasi-periodicity with simultaneously present slow and fast oscillations. Increasing the amplitude of the chirped drive, we observe that the dynamics, although being periodic, become severely damped in their amplitude. Our study establishes that by tuning the temporal evolution of the quantum seesaw, a precise control of tunneling dynamics of the correlated bosons can be achieved. Since harmonic driving and chirp frequency modulation of the seesaw are experimentally achievable, our simulations can be experimentally realized in laboratories dealing with cold atomic gases.

Dynamical pruning of the non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of trapped ultracold bosons

The investigation of the nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of bosonic many-body systems is very challenging due to the excessively growing Hilbert space and poses a major problem for their theoretical description and simulation. We present a novel dynamical pruning approach in the framework of the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) to tackle this issue by dynamically detecting the most relevant number states of the underlying physical system and modifying the many-body Hamiltonian accordingly. We discuss two different number state selection criteria as well as two different ways to modify the Hamiltonian. Our scheme regularly re-evaluates the number state selection in order to dynamically adapt to the time evolution of the system. To benchmark our methodology, we study the nonequilibrium dynamics of bosonic particles confined either in an optical lattice or in a double-well potential. It is shown that our approach reproduces the unpruned MCTDHB results accurately while yielding a significant reduction of the simulation time. The speedup is particularly pronounced in the case of the optical lattice.

Effective approach to impurity dynamics in one-dimensional trapped Bose gases

We investigate a temporal evolution of an impurity atom in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas following a sudden change of the boson-impurity interaction strength. Our focus is on the effects of inhomogeneity due to the harmonic confinement. These effects can be described by an effective one-body model where both the mass and the spring constant are renormalized. This is in contrast to the classic renormalization, which addresses only the mass. We propose an effective single-particle Hamiltonian and apply the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons to explore its validity. Numerical results suggest that the effective mass is smaller than the impurity mass, which means that it cannot straightforwardly be extracted from translationally invariant models.

Many-Body Quantum Dynamics of a Bosonic Josephson Junction with a Finite-Range Interaction

The out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics of a Bose gas trapped in an asymmetric double well and interacting with a finite-range interaction has been studied in real space by solving the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation numerically accurately using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). We have focused on the weakly interacting limit where the system is essentially condensed. We have examined the impact of the range of the interaction on the dynamics of the system, both at the mean-field and many-body levels. Explicitly, we have studied the maximal and the minimal values of the many-body position variance in each cycle of oscillation, and the overall pace of its growth. We find that the range of the interaction affects the dynamics of the system differently for the right well and the left well. We have also examined the infinite-particle limit and find that even there, the impact of the range of the interaction can only be described by a many-body theory such as MCTDHB.

Generating scalable entanglement of ultracold bosons in superlattices through resonant shaking

Based on a one-dimensional double-well superlattice with a unit filling of ultracold atoms per site, we propose a scheme to generate scalable entangled states in the superlattice through resonant lattice shakings. Our scheme utilizes periodic lattice modulations to entangle two atoms in each unit cell with respect to their orbital degree of freedom, and the complete atomic system in the superlattice becomes a cluster of bipartite entangled atom pairs. To demonstrate this we perform $ab \ initio$ quantum dynamical simulations using the Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree Method for Bosons, which accounts for all correlations among the atoms. The proposed clusters of bipartite entanglements manifest as an essential resource for various quantum applications, such as measurement based quantum computation. The lattice shaking scheme to generate this cluster possesses advantages such as a high scalability, fast processing speed, rich controllability on the target entangled states, and accessibility with current experimental techniques.

Phases, many-body entropy measures, and coherence of interacting bosons in optical lattices

Already a few bosons with contact interparticle interactions in small optical lattices feature a variety of quantum phases: superfluid, Mott-insulator and fermionized Tonks gases can be probed in such systems. To detect these phases -- pivotal for both experiment and theory -- as well as their many-body properties we analyze several distinct measures for the one-body and many-body Shannon information entropies. We exemplify the connection of these entropies with spatial correlations in the many-body state by contrasting them to the Glauber normalized correlation functions. To obtain the ground-state for lattices with commensurate filling (i.e. an integer number of particles per site) for the full range of repulsive interparticle interactions we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) in order to solve the many-boson Schr\"odinger equation. We demonstrate that all emergent phases -- the superfluid, the Mott insulator, and the fermionized gas can be characterized equivalently by our many-body entropy measures and by Glauber's normalized correlation functions. In contrast to our many-body entropy measures, single-particle entropy cannot capture these transitions.

Impact of the range of the interaction on the quantum dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction

The out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction (BJJ) with long-range interaction is studied in real space by solving the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation numerically accurately using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. Having the many-boson wave-function at hand we can examine the impact of the range of the interaction on the properties of the BJJ dynamics, viz. density oscillations and their collapse, self trapping, depletion and fragmentation, as well as the position variance, both at the mean-field and many-body level. Explicitly, the frequency of the density oscillations and the time required for their collapse, the value of fragmentation at the plateau, the maximal and the minimal values of the position variance in each cycle of oscillation and the overall pace of its growth are key to our study. We find competitive effect between the interaction and the confining trap. The presence of the tail part of the interaction basically enhances the effective repulsion as the range of the interaction is increased starting from a short, finite range. But, as the range becomes comparable with the trap size, the system approaches a situation where all the atoms feel a constant potential and the impact of the tail on the dynamics diminishes. There is an optimal range of the interaction in which physical quantities of the junction are attaining their extreme values.

Many-body quantum dynamics in the decay of bent dark solitons of Bose–Einstein condensates

The beyond mean-field (MF) dynamics of a bent dark soliton (BDS) embedded in a two-dimensional repulsively interacting Bose–Einstein condensate is explored. We examine the case of a single BDS comparing the MF dynamics to a correlated approach, the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons. Dynamical snaking of this bent structure is observed, signaling the onset of fragmentation which becomes significant during the vortex nucleation. In contrast to the MF approximation ‘filling’ of the vortex core is observed, leading in turn to the formation of filled-core vortices, instead of the MF vortex–antivortex pairs. The resulting smearing effect in the density is a rather generic feature, occurring when solitonic structures are exposed to quantum fluctuations. Here, we show that this filling owes its existence to the dynamical building of an antidark structure developed in the next-to-leading order orbital. We further demonstrate that the aforementioned beyond MF dynamics can be experimentally detected using the variance of single shot measurements. Additionally, a variety of excitations including vortices, oblique dark solitons, and open ring dark soliton-like structures building upon higher-lying orbitals is observed. We demonstrate that signatures of the higher-lying orbital excitations emerge in the total density, and can be clearly captured by inspecting the one-body coherence. In the latter context, the localization of one-body correlations exposes the existence of the multi-orbital vortex-antidark structure.

A unified ab initio approach to the correlated quantum dynamics of ultracold fermionic and bosonic mixtures.

We extent the recently developed Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method for Bosons for simulating the correlated quantum dynamics of bosonic mixtures to the fermionic sector and establish a unifying approach for the investigation of the correlated quantum dynamics of a mixture of indistinguishable particles, be it fermions or bosons. Relying on a multi-layer wave-function expansion, the resulting Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method for Mixtures (ML-MCTDHX) can be adapted to efficiently resolve system-specific intra- and inter-species correlations. The versatility and efficiency of ML-MCTDHX are demonstrated by applying it to the problem of colliding few-atom mixtures of both Bose-Fermi and Fermi-Fermi types. Thereby, we elucidate the role of correlations in the transmission and reflection properties of the collisional events. In particular, we present examples where the reflection (transmission) at the other atomic species is a correlation-dominated effect, i.e., it is suppressed in the mean-field approximation.

Many-body effects in the excitation spectrum of weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates in one-dimensional optical lattices

In this work, we study many-body excitations of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) trapped in periodic one-dimensional optical lattices. In particular, we investigate the impact of quantum depletion onto the structure of the low-energy spectrum and contrast the findings to the mean-field predictions of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations. Accurate results for the many-body excited states are obtained by applying a linear-response theory atop the MCTDHB (multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons) equations of motion, termed LR-MCTDHB. We demonstrate for condensates in a triple well that even weak ground-state depletion of around $1\%$ leads to visible many-body effects in the low-energy spectrum which deviate substantially from the corresponding BdG spectrum. We further show that these effects also appear in larger systems with more lattice sites and particles, indicating the general necessity of a full many-body treatment.

Time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field theory for bosonic many-body systems

We develop an ab initio time-dependent wavefunction based theory for the description of a many-body system of cold interacting bosons. Like the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB), the theory is based on a configurational interaction Ansatz for the many-body wavefunction with time-dependent self-consistent-field orbitals. The theory generalizes the MCTDHB method by incorporating restrictions on the active space of the orbital excitations. The restrictions are specified based on the physical situation at hand. The equations of motion of this time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field (TD-RASSCF) theory are derived. The similarity between the formal development of the theory for bosons and fermions is discussed. The restrictions on the active space allow the theory to be evaluated under conditions where other wavefunction based methods due to exponential scaling in the numerical effort cannot, and to clearly identify the excitations that are important for an accurate description, significantly beyond the mean-field approach. For ground state calculations we find it to be important to allow a few particles to have the freedom to move in many orbitals, an insight facilitated by the flexibility of the restricted-active-space Ansatz. Moreover, we find that a high accuracy can be obtained by including only even excitations in the many-body self-consistent-field wavefunction. Time-dependent simulations of harmonically trapped bosons subject to a quenching of their noncontact interaction, show failure of the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii approach within a fraction of a harmonic oscillation period. The TD-RASSCF theory remains accurate at much reduced computational cost compared to the MCTDHB method. Exploring the effect of changes of the restricted-active-space allows us to identify that even self-consistent-field excitations are mainly responsible for the accuracy of the method.