Soliton dynamics of an atomic spinor condensate on a Ring Lattice

Published

March 6, 2013

Author(s)

Indubala I. Satija, Carlos L. Pando L., Eite Tiesinga

Abstract

We study the dynamics of macroscopically-coherent matter waves of an ultra-cold atomic spin-1 or spinor condensate on a ring lattice of six sites and demonstrate a novel type of spatio-temporal internal Josephson effect. Using a discrete solitary mode of uncoupled spin components as an initial condition, the time evolution of this many-body system is found to be characterized by two dominant frequencies leading to quasiperiodic dynamics at various sites. The dynamics of spatially-averaged and spin-averaged degrees of freedom, however, is periodic enabling an unique identification of the two frequencies. By increasing the spin-dependent atom-atom interaction strength we observe a resonance state, where the ratio of the two frequencies is a characteristic integer multiple and the spin-and-spatial degrees of freedom oscillate in ''unison''. Crucially, this resonant state is found to signal the onset to chaotic dynamics characterized by a broad band spectrum. In a ferromagnetic spinor condensate with attractive spin-dependent interactions, the resonance is accompanied by a transition from liberation- to rotational-type dynamics as the time evolution of the relative phase of the matter wave of the individual spin projections changes from bounded to unbounded.

Citation

Physical Review A

Volume

87

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.033608

Local Download

Keywords

bose condensates, magnetism, ultra-cold atoms, chaos theory

Citation

Satija, I. , Pando L., C. and Tiesinga, E. (2013), Soliton dynamics of an atomic spinor condensate on a Ring Lattice, Physical Review A, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.033608, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=913436 (Accessed October 10, 2025)