Phase Coherence of Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates Loaded in State-Dependent Optical Lattices

Abstract

Phase coherence and localization of Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC) in optical lattices is a notable property that is changing under the superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition. For a single-component BEC, long-range phase coherence across lattice wells is lost as the lattice height is sufficiently increased. Phase coherences of two-component overlapping mixture of BECs, however, are nontrivial because of the interspecies interaction between components, affecting localization of condensates. For such cases, the BECs form two interdependent mean-field lattices made of each component in addition to optical lattices. We prepare initial BEC clouds as a collection of small Bogoliubov quasiparticles added to classical mean-fields, and obtain the dynamics under phase space representations, where the density operators are projected onto phase space. Among various phase space representations, we focus on a Truncated Wigner Approximation (TWA) and a positive P representation, and we construct a hybrid model to combine them. Since a high volume of numerical integration is required for sufficient convergence from ensembles, we construct efficient numerical methods to reduce the sample variance. We demonstrate time evolution of phase coherence of one-component and two-component BECs in state-dependent optical lattices. For one-component BECs, we show that phase coherence loss depends on lattice heights. In the cycling process of lattice height changes, we investigate nonadiabatic effects depending on initial ramp-up speeds. The hybrid model compared with the TWA exhibits temporal fluctuations in coherence and sudden phase diffusion at the end of ramp-up of a lattice. For two-component BECs, we consider that the two wavefunctions are localized at periodic potential wells whose positions differ by a half-period between the two. Dependence on population imbalance between two components becomes another factor on coherence loss. We show that under gradual loading of an optical lattice effective only to first component, loss of phase coherence of first atoms is enhanced and that of second atoms is weakened as the fraction of second atoms is increased in the mixture. We also demonstrate effects of localizing mean-field lattices on coherence loss under various lattice heights.