Atomic Josephson junction with two bosonic species

Abstract: We study an atomic Josephson junction (AJJ) in presence of two interacting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) confined in a double well trap. We assume that bosons of different species interact with each other. The macroscopic wave functions of the two components obey to a system of two 3D coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (GPE). We write the Lagrangian of the system, and from this we derive a system of coupled ordinary differential equations (ODE), for which the coupled pendula represent the mechanic analogous. These differential equations control the dynamical behavior of the fractional imbalance and of the relative phase of each bosonic component. We perform the stability analysis around the points which preserve the symmetry and get an analytical formula for the oscillation frequency around the stable points. Such a formula could be used as an indirect measure of the inter-species s-wave scattering length. We also study the oscillations of each fractional imbalance around zero and non zero - the macroscopic quantum self-trapping (MQST) - time averaged values. For different values of the inter-species interaction amplitude, we carry out this study both by directly solving the two GPE and by solving the corresponding coupled pendula equations. We show that, under certain conditions, the predictions of these two approaches are in good agreement. Moreover, we calculate the crossover value of the inter-species interaction amplitude which signs the onset of MQST.