Periodic Quantum Tunneling and Parametric Resonance with Cigar-Shaped Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

We study the tunneling properties of a cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate by using an effective 1D nonpolynomial nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (NPSE). First we investigate a mechanism to generate periodic pulses of coherent matter by means of a Bose condensate confined in a potential well with an oscillating height of the energy barrier. We show that is possible to control the periodic emission of matter waves and the tunneling fraction of the Bose condensate. We find that the number of emitted particles strongly increases if the period of oscillation of the height of the energy barrier is in parametric resonance with the period of oscillation of the center of mass of the condensate inside the potential well. Then we use NPSE to analyze the periodic tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential which has an oscillating energy barrier. We show that the dynamics of the Bose condensate critically depends on the frequency of the oscillating energy barrier. The macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST) of the condensate can be suppressed under the condition of parametric resonance between the frequency of the energy barrier and the frequency of oscillation through the barrier of the very small fraction of particles which remain untrapped during MQST.Comment: latex, 23 pages, 10 figures, to be published in J. Phys. B (Atom. Mol.), related papers can be found at http://www.mi.infm.it/salasnich/tdqg.htm