In a double-well potential, a Bose-Einstein condensate exhibits Josephson oscillations or self-trapping, depending on its initial preparation and on the ratio of interparticle interaction to interwell tunneling. Here, we elucidate the role of the exchange symmetry for the dynamics with a mixture of two distinguishable species with identical physical properties, that is, which are governed by an isospecific interaction and external potential. In the mean-field limit, the spatial population imbalance of the mixture can be described by the dynamics of a single species in an effective potential with modified properties or, equivalently, with an effective total particle number. The oscillation behavior can be tuned by populating the second species while maintaining the spatial population imbalance and all other parameters constant. In the corresponding many-body approach, the single-species description approximates the full counting statistics well also outside the realm of spin-coherent states. The method is extended to general Bose-Hubbard systems and to their classical mean-field limits, which suggests an effective single-species description of multicomponent Bose gases with weakly an-isospecific interactions.

• Received 26 April 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.063630