Single-shot simulations of dynamic quantum many-body systems

A simulation method connects single-shot measurements in ultracold atom experiments to the probability distribution of the many-body wavefunction, elucidating the role of the fluctuations in different experimental situations. Single experimental shots of ultracold quantum gases sample the many-parti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature physics 2016-05, Vol.12 (5), p.451-454
Main Authors: Sakmann, Kaspar, Kasevich, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/766/119/2791
639/766/36/1125
639/766/483/1139
639/766/483/3924
639/766/483/640
Atomic
Classical and Continuum Physics
Complex Systems
Computer simulation
Condensates
Condensed Matter Physics
Dynamical systems
Dynamics
Fluctuation
Fluctuations
letter
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical and Computational Physics
Mathematical models
Molecular
Optical and Plasma Physics
Physics
Probability distribution
Quantum physics
Schrodinger equation
Shot
Simulation
Theoretical
Time dependence
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Summary:A simulation method connects single-shot measurements in ultracold atom experiments to the probability distribution of the many-body wavefunction, elucidating the role of the fluctuations in different experimental situations. Single experimental shots of ultracold quantum gases sample the many-particle probability distribution. In a few cases such single shots could be successfully simulated from a given many-body wavefunction 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , but for realistic time-dependent many-body dynamics this has been difficult to achieve. Here, we show how single shots can be simulated from numerical solutions of the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation. Using this approach, we provide first-principle explanations for fluctuations in the collision of attractive Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), for the appearance of randomly fluctuating vortices and for the centre-of-mass fluctuations of attractive BECs in a harmonic trap. We also show how such simulations provide full counting distributions and correlation functions of any order. Such calculations have not been previously possible and our method is broadly applicable to many-body systems whose phenomenology is driven by information beyond what is typically available in low-order correlation functions.
ISSN:1745-2473
1745-2481
DOI:10.1038/nphys3631