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Macroscopic self-trapping in the dynamical tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Sebastian Wüster1,2,3,4,*, Joy Cree5,6, and Matthew J. Davis5,†

  • *Contact author: sebastian@iiserb.ac.in
  • †Contact author: mdavis@uq.edu.au
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Phys. Rev. A 112, 063305 – Published 4 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n8nw-r2hv

Abstract

A Bose-Einstein condensate in a modulated, one-dimensional, anharmonic potential can exhibit dynamical tunneling between islands of regular motion in phase space. With increasingly repulsive atomic interactions, dynamical tunneling is predicted to cease due to self-trapping [S. Wüster et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 080401 (2012)]. This suppression of tunneling oscillations is related to the same phenomenon that occurs in the two-mode dynamics of a repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential. Here we present a two-mode model for dynamical tunneling based on nonlinear Floquet states and examine the range of validity of the approximation. We characterize nonlinear dynamical tunneling for different trap strengths, modulation amplitudes, and effective Planck constants. Using the linear Floquet states we derive an expression for the critical nonlinearity beyond which tunneling ceases. Finally we demonstrate the dynamical instability of selected nonlinear Floquet states and show how to initialize some Floquet states in experiments. Our detailed survey will enable experiments to target accessible parameter regimes for the study of nonlinear dynamical tunneling.

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Phys. Rev. A 112, 063305– Published 4 December, 2025
  • Received 17 August 2025
  • Accepted 12 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

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