Motion of a Distinguishable Impurity in the Bose Gas: Arrested Expansion Without a Lattice and Impurity Snaking

Neil J. Robinson, Jean-Sébastien Caux, and Robert M. Konik
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 145302 – Published 7 April 2016
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Abstract

We consider the real-time dynamics of an initially localized distinguishable impurity injected into the ground state of the Lieb-Liniger model. Focusing on the case where integrability is preserved, we numerically compute the time evolution of the impurity density operator in regimes far from analytically tractable limits. We find that the injected impurity undergoes a stuttering motion as it moves and expands. For an initially stationary impurity, the interaction-driven formation of a quasibound state with a hole in the background gas leads to arrested expansion—a period of quasistationary behavior. When the impurity is injected with a finite center-of-mass momentum, the impurity moves through the background gas in a snaking manner, arising from a quantum Newton’s cradlelike scenario where momentum is exchanged back and forth between the impurity and the background gas.

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  • Received 17 June 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.145302

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Neil J. Robinson1,2,*, Jean-Sébastien Caux3, and Robert M. Konik1

  • 1CMPMS Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973-5000, USA
  • 2Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3NP, United Kingdom
  • 3Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, Postbus 94485, 1090 GL Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  • *nrobinson@bnl.gov

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Issue

Vol. 116, Iss. 14 — 8 April 2016

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