2005/06/29 by A. J. Daley, Andrew J. Daley, Stephen R. L. Clark +4 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.soft #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.72.043618
published as Phys. Rev. A 72, 043618 (2005) · 10 pages, 14 figures
arxiv created 2005/06/29 · openalex publication_date 2005/10/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We study the dynamics of many atoms in the recently proposed single-atom-transistor setup [A. Micheli, A. J. Daley, D. Jaksch, and P. Zoller, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 140408 (2004)] using recently developed numerical methods. In this setup, a localized spin-1∕2 impurity is used to switch the transport of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice: in one state the impurity is transparent to probe atoms, but in the other acts as a single-atom mirror. We calculate time-dependent currents for bosons passing the impurity atom, and find interesting many-body effects. These include substantially different transport properties for bosons in the strongly interacting (Tonks) regime when compared with fermions, and an unexpected decrease in the current when weakly interacting probe atoms are initially accelerated to a nonzero mean momentum. We also provide more insight into the application of our numerical methods to this system, and discuss open questions about the currents approached by the system on long time scales.