2012/07/13 by E. Torrontegui, S. Martínez-Garaot, M. Modugno +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.87.033630
published as Physical Review A 87, 033630 (2013)
arxiv created 2012/07/13 · arxiv updated 2015/02/26
When attempting to split coherent cold atom clouds or a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by bifurcation of the trap into a double well, slow adiabatic following is unstable with respect to any slight asymmetry, and the wave "collapses" to the lower well, whereas a generic fast chopping splits the wave but it also excites it. Shortcuts to adiabaticity engineered to speed up the adiabatic process through non-adiabatic transients, provide instead quiet and robust fast splitting. The non-linearity of the BEC makes the proposed shortcut even more stable.