Phase separation can be stronger than chaos

TL;DR

This paper explores how phase separation in a bosonic mixture on a ring trimer can persist even in chaotic regimes, revealing that chaos does not necessarily lead to mixing of populations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that phase separation can be robust against chaos, providing a detailed analysis of stability, demixed configurations, and mechanisms of chaos in the system.

Findings

Chaos can arise through three different mechanisms.

Phase separation persists despite chaotic dynamics.

Chaos does not always lead to mixing of boson populations.

Abstract

We investigate several dynamical regimes characterizing a bosonic binary mixture loaded in a ring trimer, with particular reference to the persistence of demixing. The degree of phase separation is evaluated by means of the "Entropy of mixing", an indicator borrowed from Statistical Thermodynamics. Three classes of demixed stationary configurations are identified and their energetic and linear stability carefully analyzed. An extended set of trajectories originating in the vicinity of fixed points are explicitly simulated and chaos is shown to arise according to three different mechanisms. In many dynamical regimes, we show that chaos is not able to disrupt the order imposed by phase separation, i.e. boson populations, despite evolving in a chaotic fashion, do not mix. This circumstance can be explained either with energetic considerations or in terms of dynamical restrictions.