Chimera patterns in conservative systems and ultracold atoms with mediated nonlocal hopping

Abstract

Chimera patterns, characterized by coexisting regions of phase coherence and incoherence, have so far been studied in non-conservative systems with dissipation. Here, we show that the formation of chimera patterns can also be observed in conservative Hamiltonian systems with nonlocal hopping in which both energy and particle number are conserved. Effective nonlocality can be realized in a physical system with only local coupling if different time scales exist, which can be illustrated by a minimal conservative model with an additional mediating channel. Finally, we show that the patterns should be observable in ultracold atomic systems. Nonlocal spatial hopping over up to tens of lattice sites with independently tunable hopping strength and on-site nonlinearity can be implemented in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate with a spin-dependent optical lattice, where the untrapped component serves as the matter-wave mediating field. The present work highlights the connections between chimera patterns, nonlinear dynamics, condensed matter, and ultracold atoms.Comment: 4 figures with supplementar