arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sandro Wimberger.
We analytically investigate the recently proposed and implemented discrete-time quantum walk based on kicked ultra-cold atoms. We show how the internal level structure of the kicked atoms leads to the emergence of a relative light-shift phase immediately relevant for the experimental realization. Analytical solutions are provided for the momentum distribution for both the case of quantum resonance and the near-resonant quasimomenta.
A method is presented for the systematic derivation of a hierarchy of coupled equations for the computation of two-time correlation functions of operators for open many-body quantum systems. We show how these systems of equations can be closed in mean-field and beyond approximations. Results for the specific example of the spectral weight functions are discussed. Our method allows one to access the full temporal evolution, not just the stationary solution, of non-equilibrium open quantum problems described by a Markovian master equation.
We discuss the relaxation dynamics for a bosonic tunneling junction with two modes in the central potential well. We use a master equation description for ultracold bosons tunneling in the presence of noise and incoherent coupling processes into the two central modes. Whilst we cannot quantitatively reproduce the experimental data of the setup reported in [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 115}, 050601 (2015)], we find a reasonable qualitative agreement of the refilling process of the initially depleted central site. Our results may pave the way for the control of bosonic tunneling junctions by the simultaneous presence of decoherence processes and atom-atom interaction.
Quantum-resonance ratchets have been realized over the last ten years for the production of directed currents of atoms. These non-dissipative systems are based on the interaction of a Bose-Einstein condensate with an optical standing wave potential to produce a current of atoms in momentum space. In this paper we provide a review of the important features of these ratchets with a particular emphasis on their optimization using more complex initial states. We also examine their stability close to resonance conditions of the kicking. Finally we discuss the way in which these ratchets may pave the way for applications in quantum (random) walks and matter-wave interferometry.
The expansion of an initially confined Bose-Einstein condensate into either free space or a tilted optical lattice is investigated in a mean-field approach. The effect of the interactions is to enhance or suppress the transport depending on the sign and strength of the interactions. These effects are discusses in detail in view of recent experiments probing non-equilibrium transport of ultracold quantum gases.
A Bose gas in a double well is investigated in the presence of single-particle, two-body and three-body asymmetric loss. The loss induces an interesting decay behavior of the total population as well as a possibility to control the dynamics of the system. In the noninteracting limit with asymmetric single-body dissipation, the dynamics of the populations can be obtained analytically. The general many-body problem requires, however, an adequate approximation. We use a mean-field approximation and the Bogoliubov back-reaction beyond mean-field truncation, which we extend up to three-body loss. Both methods are compared with exact many-body Monte-Carlo simulations.
We study superadiabatic quantum control of a three-level quantum system whose energy spectrum exhibits multiple avoided crossings. In particular, we investigate the possibility of treating the full control task in terms of independent two-level Landau-Zener problems. We first show that the time profiles of the elements of the full control Hamiltonian are characterized by peaks centered around the crossing times. These peaks decay algebraically for large times. In principle, such a power-law scaling invalidates the hypothesis of perfect separability. Nonetheless, we address the problem from a pragmatic point of view by studying the fidelity obtained through separate control as a function of the intercrossing separation. This procedure may be a good approach to achieve approximate adiabatic driving of a specific instantaneous eigenstate in realistic implementations.
We propose a realistic scheme to implement discrete-time quantum walks in the Brillouin zone (i.e., in quasimomentum space) with a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. Relying on a static optical lattice to suppress tunneling in real space, the condensate is displaced in quasimomentum space in discrete steps conditioned upon the internal state of the atoms, while short pulses periodically couple the internal states. We show that tunable twisted boundary conditions can be implemented in a fully natural way by exploiting the periodicity of the Brillouin zone. The proposed setup does not suffer from off-resonant scattering of photons and could allow a robust implementation of quantum walks with several tens of steps at least. In addition, onsite atom-atom interactions can be used to simulate interactions with infinitely long range in the Brillouin zone.
The interband dynamics of a two-band Bose-Hubbard model is studied with strongly correlated bosons forming single-site double occupancies referred to as doublons. Our model for resonant doublon interband coupling exhibits interesting dynamical features such as quantum Zeno effect, the generation of states such as a two-band Bell-like state and an upper-band Mott-like state. The evolution of the asymptotic state is controlled here by the effective opening of one or both of the two bands, which models decay channels.
We propose theoretically an experimentally realizable method to demonstrate the Lyapunov instability and to extract the value of the largest Lyapunov exponent for a chaotic many-particle interacting system. The proposal focuses specifically on a lattice of coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in the classical regime describable by the discrete Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We suggest to use imperfect time-reversal of system's dynamics known as Loschmidt echo, which can be realized experimentally by reversing the sign of the Hamiltonian of the system. The routine involves tracking and then subtracting the noise of virtually any observable quantity before and after the time-reversal. We support the theoretical analysis by direct numerical simulations demonstrating that the largest Lyapunov exponent can indeed be extracted from the Loschmidt echo routine. We also discuss possible values of experimental parameters required for implementing this proposal.
A many-body Wannier-Stark system coupled to an effective reservoir is studied within a non-Hermitian approach in the presence of a periodic driving. We show how the interplay of dissipation and driving dynamically induces a subspace of states which are very robust against dissipation. We numerically probe the structure of these asymptotic states and their robustness to imperfections in the initial-state preparation and to the size of the system. Moreover, the asymptotic states are found to be strongly entangled making them interesting for further applications.
We demonstrate quantum resonance ratchets created with Bose-Einstein condensates exposed to pulses of an off-resonant standing light wave. We show how some of the basic properties of the ratchets are controllable through the creation of different initial states of the system. In particular, our results prove that through an appropriate choice of initial state it is possible to reduce the extent to which the ratchet state changes with respect to time. We develop a simple theory to explain our results and indicate how ratchets might be used as part of a matter wave interferometer or quantum-random walk experiment.
We revisit the fidelity as a measure for the stability and the complexity of the quantum motion of single and many-body systems. Within the context of cold atoms, we present on overview of applications of two fidelities which we call static and dynamical fidelity, respectively. The static fidelity applies to quantum problems which can be diagonalized since it is defined via the eigenfunctions. In particular, we show that the static fidelity is a highly effective practical detector of avoided crossings characterizing the complexity of the systems and their evolutions. The dynamical fidelity is defined via the time-dependent wave functions. Focussing on the quantum kicked rotor system, we highlight a few practical applications of fidelity measurements in order to better understand the large variety of dynamical regimes of this paradigm of a low-dimensional system with mixed regular-chaotic phase space.
One-dimensional Bose-Hubbard models are well known to obey a transition from regular to quantum-chaotic spectral statistics. We are extending this concept to relatively simple two-dimensional many-body models. Also in two dimensions a transition from regular to chaotic spectral statistics is found and discussed. In particular, we analyze the dependence of the spectral properties on the bond number of the two-dimensional lattices and the applied boundary conditions. For maximal connectivity, the systems behave most regularly in agreement with the applicability of mean-field approaches in the limit of many nearest-neighbor couplings at each site.
Each step in a quantum random walk is typically understood to have two basic components; a `coin-toss' which produces a random superposition of two states, and a displacement which moves each component of the superposition by different amounts. Here we suggest the realization of a walk in momentum space with a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate subject to a quantum ratchet realized with a pulsed, off-resonant optical lattice. By an appropriate choice of the lattice detuning, we show how the atomic momentum can be entangled with the internal spin states of the atoms. For the coin-toss, we propose to use a microwave pulse to mix these internal states. We present experimental results showing an optimized quantum ratchet, and through a series of simulations, demonstrate how our proposal gives extraordinary control of the quantum walk. This should allow for the investigation of possible biases, and classical-to-quantum dynamics in the presence of natural and engineered noise.
A kicking sequence of the atom optics kicked rotor at quantum resonance can be interpreted as a quantum random walk in momentum space. We show how to steer such a random walk by applying a random sequence of intensities and phases of the kicking lattice chosen according to a probability distribution. This distribution converts on average into the final momentum distribution of the kicked atoms. In particular, it is shown that a power-law distribution for the kicking strengths results in a Lévy walk in momentum space and in a power-law with the same exponent in the averaged momentum distribution. Furthermore, we investigate the stability of our predictions in the context of a realistic experiment with Bose-Einstein condensates.
We present exact methods for the numerical integration of the Wannier-Stark system in a many-body scenario including two Bloch bands. Our ab initio approaches allow for the treatment of a few-body problem with bosonic statistics and strong interparticle interaction. The numerical implementation is based on the Lanczos algorithm for the diagonalization of large, but sparse symmetric Floquet matrices. We analyze the scheme efficiency in terms of the computational time, which is shown to scale polynomially with the size of the system. The numerically computed eigensystem is applied to the analysis of the Floquet Hamiltonian describing our problem. We show that this allows, for instance, for the efficient detection and characterization of avoided crossings and their statistical analysis. We finally compare the efficiency of our Lanczos diagonalization for computing the temporal evolution of our many-body system with an explicit fourth order Runge-Kutta integration. Both implementations heavily exploit efficient matrix-vector multiplication schemes. Our results should permit an extrapolation of the applicability of exact methods to increasing sizes of generic many-body quantum problems with bosonic statistics.
Negative differential conductivity (NDC) is a widely exploited effect in modern electronic components. Here, a proof-of-principle is given for the observation of NDC in a quantum transport device for neutral atoms employing a multi-mode tunneling junction. The transport of the many-body quantum system is governed by the interplay between the tunnel coupling, the interaction energy and the thermodynamics of intrinsic collisions, which turn the coherent coupling into a hopping process. The resulting current voltage characteristics exhibit NDC, for which we identify a new microscopic physical mechanism. Our study opens new ways for the future implementation and control of complex neutral atom quantum circuits.