Pattern formation of correlated impurities subjected to an impurity-medium interaction pulse

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of correlated bosonic impurities in a one-dimensional environment under time-dependent interactions, revealing phase transitions, impurity localization, and soliton formation.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of impurity-medium interaction pulses and their effects on phase separation, impurity localization, and soliton nucleation in a quantum many-body system.

Findings

Impurities transition between miscible and immiscible phases under modulation.

Strong modulations expel impurities to the bath edges, causing localization.

Dark-bright solitons form even without correlations.

Abstract

We study the correlated dynamics of few interacting bosonic impurities immersed in a one-dimensional harmonically trapped bosonic environment. The mixture is exposed to a time-dependent impurity-medium interaction pulse moving it across the relevant phase separation boundary. For modulation frequencies smaller than the trapping one, the system successively transits through the miscible/immiscible phases according to the driving of the impurity-medium interactions. For strong modulations, and driving from the miscible to the immiscible regime, a significant fraction of the impurities is expelled to the edges of the bath. They exhibit a strong localization behavior and tend to equilibrate. Following the reverse driving protocol, the impurities perform a breathing motion while featuring a two-body clustering and the bath is split into two incoherent parts. Interestingly, in both driving scenarios, dark-bright solitons are nucleated in the absence of correlations. A localization of the impurities around the trap center for weak impurity-impurity repulsions is revealed, which subsequently disperse into the bath for increasing interactions.