Fragmentation, domain formation and atom number fluctuations of a two-species Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice

Abstract

We theoretically study the loading of a two-species Bose-Einstein condensate to an optical lattice in a tightly confined one-dimensional trap. Due to quantum fluctuations, the relative inter- and intra-species phase coherence between the atoms and the on-site atom number fluctuations are reduced in the miscible regime. For the immiscible case the fluctuations are enhanced and the atoms form metastable interleaved spatially separated domains where the domain length and its fluctuations are affected by quantum fluctuations. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.