Properties of fragmented repulsive condensates

Abstract

Repulsive Bose-Einstein condensates immersed into a double-well trap potential are studied within the framework of the recently introduced mean-field approach which allows for bosons to reside in several different orthonormal orbitals. In the case of a one-orbital mean-field theory (Gross-Pitaevskii) the ground state of the system reveals a bifurcation scenario at some critical values of the interparticle interaction and/or the number of particles. At about the same values of the parameters the two-orbital mean-field predicts that the system becomes two-fold fragmented. By applying the three-orbital mean field we verify numerically that for the double-well external potential studied here the overall best mean-field is achieved with two orbitals. The variational principle minimizes the energy at a vanishing population of the third orbital. To discuss the energies needed to remove a boson from and the energies gained by adding a boson to the condensate, we introduce boson ionization potentials and boson affinities and relate them to the chemical potentials. The impact of the finite number of bosons in the condensate on these quantities is analyzed. We recall that within the framework of the multi-orbital mean-field theory each fragment is characterized by its own chemical potential. Finally, the stability of fragmented states is discussed in terms of the boson transfer energy which is the energy needed to transfer a boson from one fragment to another.