Entanglement-assisted tunneling dynamics of impurities in a double well immersed in a bath of lattice trapped bosons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how entanglement and interspecies interactions influence the tunneling behavior of impurities in a double well immersed in a bosonic bath, revealing controllable and self-trapping regimes.

Contribution

It demonstrates the role of entanglement and interaction strength in impurity tunneling dynamics, including the transition from irregular to delayed and self-trapped tunneling behaviors.

Findings

Weak coupling leads to irregular tunneling.

Strong coupling causes delayed tunneling and self-trapping.

Similar dynamics observed for two impurities with pair and single-particle tunneling.

Abstract

We unravel the correlated tunneling dynamics of an impurity trapped in a double well and interacting repulsively with a majority species of lattice trapped bosons. Upon quenching the tilt of the double well it is found that the quench-induced tunneling dynamics depends crucially on the interspecies interaction strength and the presence of entanglement inherent in the system. In particular, for weak couplings the impurity performs a rather irregular tunneling process in the double well. Increasing the interspecies coupling it is possible to control the response of the impurity which undergoes a delayed tunneling while the majority species effectively acts as a material barrier. For very strong interspecies interaction strengths the impurity exhibits a self-trapping behaviour. We showcase that a similar tunneling dynamics takes place for two weakly interacting impurities and identify its underlying transport mechanisms in terms of pair and single-particle tunneling processes.