Paper detail

One-dimensional transport of bosons between weakly linked reservoirs

We study a flow of ultracold bosonic atoms through a one-dimensional channel that connects two macroscopic three-dimensional reservoirs of Bose-condensed atoms via weak links implemented as potential barriers between each of the reservoirs and the channel. We consider reservoirs at equal chemical potentials so that a superflow of the quasi-condensate through the channel is driven purely by a phase difference, $2Φ$, imprinted between the reservoirs. We find that the superflow never has the standard Josephson form $\sim \sin 2Φ$. Instead, the superflow discontinuously flips direction at $2Φ=\pmπ$ and has metastable branches. We show that these features are robust and not smeared by fluctuations or phase slips. We describe a possible experimental setup for observing these phenomena.