Macroscopic quantum coherence in spinor condensates confined in an anisotropic potential

TL;DR

This paper explores macroscopic quantum coherence in a spin-1 Rb condensate within an anisotropic potential, revealing oscillatory tunneling behavior influenced by magnetic fields, modeled as a biaxial quantum magnet.

Contribution

It introduces a model of a spinor condensate as a biaxial quantum magnet considering dipole interactions and anisotropy, and proposes an experimental detection scheme for tunneling oscillations.

Findings

Tunneling splitting oscillates with magnetic field strength.

System behaves as a biaxial quantum magnet due to interactions and anisotropy.

Proposes an experimental method to observe tunneling oscillations.

Abstract

We investigate the macroscopic quantum coherence of a spin-1 Rb condensate confined in an anisotropic potential. Under the single-mode approximation, we show that the system can be modeled as a biaxial quantum magnet due to the interplay between the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction and the anisotropic potential. By applying a magnetic field along the hard-axis, we show that the tunneling splitting oscillates as a function of the field strength. We also propose an experimental scheme to detect the oscillatory behavior of the tunneling splitting by employing the Landau-Zener tunneling.