Regular and chaotic behavior of collective atomic motion in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We theoretically study binary Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in a single-well harmonic potential to probe the dynamics of collective atomic motion. The idea is to choose tunable scattering lengths through Feshbach resonances such that the ground state wavefunction for two types of the condensates are spatially immiscible where one of the condensates, located at the center of the potential trap, can be effectively treated as a potential barrier between bilateral condensates of the second type of atoms. In the case of small wavefunction overlap between bilateral condensates, one can parametrize their spatial part of the wavefunctions in the two-mode approximation together with the time-dependent population imbalance z and the phase difference φ between two wavefunctions. The condensate in the middle can be approximated by a Gaussian wavefunction with the displacement of the condensate center ξ. As driven by the time-dependent displacement of the central condensate, we find the Josephson oscillations of the collective atomic motion between bilateral condensates as well as their anharmonic generalization of macroscopic self-trapping effects. In addition, with the increase in the wavefunction overlap of bilateral condensates by properly choosing tunable atomic scattering lengths, the chaotic oscillations are found if the system departs from the state of a fixed point. The Melnikov approach with a homoclinic solution of the derived z, φ and ξ equations can successfully justify the existence of chaos. All results are consistent with the numerical solutions of the full time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equations.