Many-body tunneling dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates and vortex states in two spatial dimensions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex tunneling behavior of Bose-Einstein condensates and vortex states in a two-dimensional double well, emphasizing the importance of many-body effects and angular momentum in the dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a full many-body quantum analysis of tunneling in 2D BECs, highlighting the role of angular momentum and interparticle interactions.

Findings

Vortex states can tunnel with definite angular momentum.

Many-body effects are crucial even at weak interactions.

Angular momentum influences the onset of many-body effects.

Abstract

In this work, we study the out-of-equilibrium many-body tunneling dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a two-dimensional radial double well. We investigate the impact of interparticle repulsion and compare the influence of angular momentum on the many-body tunneling dynamics. Accurate many-body dynamics are obtained by solving the full many-body Schr\"odinger equation. We demonstrate that macroscopic vortex states of definite total angular momentum indeed tunnel and that, even in the regime of weak repulsions, a many-body treatment is necessary to capture the correct tunneling dynamics. As a general rule, many-body effects set in at weaker interactions when the tunneling system carries angular momentum.