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Time-dependent Semiclassics for Ultracold Bosons

We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of ultracold bosons in a double- and triple-well potential within the Bose-Hubbard model by means of the semiclassical Herman-Kluk propagator and compare the results to the frequently applied "classical dynamics" calculation in terms of the truncated Wigner approximation (TWA). For the double-well system we find the semiclassical results in excellent agreement with the numerically exact ones, while the TWA is not able to reproduce any revivals of the wave function. The triple-well system turns out to be more difficult to handle due to the irregularity of the corresponding classical phase space. Here, deviations of the TWA from the exact dynamics appear even for short times, while better agreement is obtained using the semiclassical approach presented in this article.