The multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons with internal degrees of freedom: Theory and composite fragmentation of multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

In this paper the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons method (MCTDHB) is derived for the case of $N$ identical bosons with internal degrees of freedom. The theory for bosons with internal degrees of freedom constitutes a generalization of the MCTDHB method that substantially enriches the many-body physics that can be described. We demonstrate that the numerically exact solution of the time-dependent many-body Schr\"odinger equation for interacting bosonic particles with internal degrees of freedom is now feasible. We report on the MCTDHB equations of motion for bosons with internal degrees of freedom and their implementation for a general many-body Hamiltonian with one-body and two-body terms that, both, may depend on the internal states of the considered particles. To demonstrate the capabilities of the theory and its software implementation integrated in the MCTDH-X software, we apply MCTDHB to the emergence of fragmentation of parabolically trapped bosons with two internal states: we study the groundstate of $N=100$ parabolically confined bosons as a function of the splitting between the state-dependent minima of the two parabolic potentials. To quantify the coherence of the system we compute its normalized one-body correlation function. We find that the coherence within each internal state of the atoms is maintained, while it is lost between the different internal states. This is a hallmark of a new kind of fragmentation which is absent in bosons without internal structure. We term the emergent phenomenon "composite fragmentation".