2014/09/30 by Dennis Dast, Daniel Haag, Holger Cartarius +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.90.052120
published as Phys. Rev. A 90, 052120 (2014) · 7 pages, 6 figures, additions in the text, to be published in Phys. Rev. A
arxiv created 2014/11/20 · arxiv updated 2014/11/26
We present a quantum master equation describing a Bose-Einstein condensate with particle loss on one lattice site and particle gain on the other lattice site whose mean-field limit is a non-Hermitian PT-symmetric Gross-Pitaevskii equation. It is shown that the characteristic properties of PT-symmetric systems, such as the existence of stationary states and the phase shift of pulses between two lattice sites, are also found in the many-particle system. Visualizing the dynamics on a Bloch sphere allows us to compare the complete dynamics of the master equation with that of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that even for a relatively small number of particles the dynamics are in excellent agreement and the master equation with balanced gain and loss is indeed an appropriate many-particle description of a PT-symmetric Bose-Einstein condensate.