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Phys. Rev. A 78, 013621 (2008) [10 pages]

Tunneling dynamics of a few bosons in a double well

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Sascha Zöllner1,*, Hans-Dieter Meyer1, and Peter Schmelcher1,2,†
1Theoretische Chemie, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
2Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 12, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Received 19 February 2008; published 18 July 2008

We study few-boson tunneling in a one-dimensional double well. As we pass from weak interactions to the fermionization limit, the Rabi oscillations first give way to highly delayed pair tunneling (for medium coupling), whereas for very strong correlations multiband Rabi oscillations emerge. All this is explained on the basis of the exact few-body spectrum and without recourse to the conventional two-mode approximation. Two-body correlations are found essential to the understanding of the different tunnel mechanisms. The investigation is complemented by discussing the effect of skewing the double well, which offers the possibility to access specific tunnel resonances.

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.78.013621
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.78.013621
PACS:
03.75.Lm, 03.65.Xp, 05.30.Jp

*sascha.zoellner@pci.uni-heidelberg.de

peter.schmelcher@pci.uni-heidelberg.de