How to seed ergodic dynamics of interacting bosons under conditions of many-body quantum chaos

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the initial state of ultracold atoms in optical lattices influences the onset of ergodic and chaotic dynamics, identifying chaos thresholds and signatures observable experimentally.

Contribution

It reveals the dependence of chaos emergence on initial states and parameters, providing insights into controlling ergodic behavior in many-body quantum systems.

Findings

Chaos thresholds vary with initial states and system parameters.

Dynamical signatures of chaos are observable in experiments.

Spectral structure tuning induces ergodic dynamics.

Abstract

We demonstrate how the initial state of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice controls the emergence of ergodic dynamics as the underlying spectral structure is tuned into the quantum chaotic regime. Distinct initial states' chaos threshold values in terms of tunneling as compared to interaction strength are identified, as well as dynamical signatures of the chaos transition, on the level of experimentally accessible observables and time scales.