Vortex macroscopic superpositions in ultracold bosons in a double-well potential

We study macroscopic superpositions in the orbital rather than the spatial degrees of freedom, in a three-dimensional double-well system. We show that the ensuing dynamics of $N$ interacting excited ultracold bosons, which in general requires at least eight single-particle modes and ${N+7 \choose N}$ Fock vectors, is described by a surprisingly small set of many-body states. An initial state with half the atoms in each well, and purposely excited in one of them, gives rise to the tunneling of axisymmetric and transverse vortex structures. We show that transverse vortices tunnel orders of magnitude faster than axisymmetric ones and are therefore more experimentally accessible. The tunneling process generates macroscopic superpositions only distinguishable by their orbital properties and within experimentally realistic times.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure

Particle density and non-local kinetic energy density functional for two-dimensional harmonically confined Fermi vapors

We evaluate analytically some ground state properties of two-dimensional harmonically confined Fermi vapors with isotropy and for an arbitrary number of closed shells. We first derive a differential form of the virial theorem and an expression for the kinetic energy density in terms of the fermion particle density and its low-order derivatives. These results allow an explicit differential equation to be obtained for the particle density. The equation is third-order, linear and homogeneous. We also obtain a relation between the turning points of kinetic energy and particle densities, and an expression of the non-local kinetic energy density functional.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Volume change of bulk metals and metal clusters due to spin-polarization

The stabilized jellium model (SJM) provides us a method to calculate the volume changes of different simple metals as a function of the spin polarization, $\zeta$, of the delocalized valence electrons. Our calculations show that for bulk metals, the equilibrium Wigner-Seitz (WS) radius, $\bar r_s(\zeta)$, is always a n increasing function of the polarization i.e., the volume of a bulk metal always increases as $\zeta$ increases, and the rate of increasing is higher for higher electron density metals. Using the SJM along with the local spin density approximation, we have also calculated the equilibrium WS radius, $\bar r_s(N,\zeta)$, of spherical jellium clusters, at which the pressure on the cluster with given numbers of total electrons, $N$, and their spin configuration $\zeta$ vanishes. Our calculations f or Cs, Na, and Al clusters show that $\bar r_s(N,\zeta)$ as a function of $\zeta$ behaves differently depending on whether $N$ corresponds to a closed-shell or an open-shell cluster. For a closed-shell cluster, it is an increasing function of $\zeta$ over the whole range $0\le\zeta\le 1$, whereas in open-shell clusters it has a decreasing behavior over the range $0\le\zeta\le\zeta_0$, where $\zeta_0$ is a polarization that the cluster has a configuration consistent with Hund's first rule. The resu lts show that for all neutral clusters with ground state spin configuration, $\zeta_0$, the inequality $\bar r_s(N,\zeta_0)\le\bar r_s(0)$ always holds (self-compression) but, at some polarization $\zeta_1>\zeta_0$, the inequality changes the direction (self-expansion). However, the inequality $\bar r_s(N,\zeta)\le\bar r_s(\zeta)$ always holds and the equality is achieved in the limit $N\to\infty$.Comment: 7 pages, RevTex, 10 figure