A dipolar self-induced bosonic Josephson junction

¹ Departament d'Estructura i Constituents de la Matèria, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona E-08028 Barcelona, Spain, EU
² IFIBA-CONICET and Departamento de Física, FCEN-UBA - Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Received: 28 January 2011
Accepted: 3 March 2011

Abstract

We propose a new scheme for observing Josephson oscillations and macroscopic quantum self-trapping in a toroidally confined Bose-Einstein condensate: a dipolar self-induced Josephson junction. Polarizing the atoms perpendicularly to the trap symmetry axis, an effective ring-shaped, double-well potential is achieved which is induced by the dipolar interaction. By numerically solving the three-dimensional time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation we show that coherent tunneling phenomena such as Josephson oscillations and quantum self-trapping can take place. The dynamics in the self-induced junction can be qualitatively described by a two-mode model taking into account both s-wave and dipolar interactions.