Rotation-driven transition into coexistent Josephson modes in an atomtronic dc-SQUID

Abstract

By means of a two-mode model, we show that transitions to different arrays of coexistent regimes in the phase space can be attained by rotating a double-well system, which consists of a toroidal condensate with two diametrically placed barriers. Such a configuration corresponds to the atomtronic counterpart of the well-known direct-current superconducting quantum interference device. Due to the phase gradient experimented by the on-site localized functions when the system is subject to rotation, a phase difference appears on each junction in order to satisfy the quantization of the velocity field around the torus. We demonstrate that such a phase can produce a significant change on the relative values of different types of hopping parameters. In particular, we show that within a determined rotation frequency interval, a hopping parameter, usually disregarded in nonrotating systems, turns out to rule the dynamics. At the limits of such a frequency interval, bifurcations of the stationary points occur, which substantially change the phase space portrait that describes the orbits of the macroscopic canonical conjugate variables. We analyze the emerging dynamics that combines the 0 and π Josephson modes, and evaluate the small-oscillation time-periods of such orbits at the frequency range where each mode survives. All the findings predicted by the model are confirmed by Gross-Pitaevskii simulations.