Atom-pair tunnelling-induced quantum phase transition and scaling behaviour of fidelity

susceptibility in the extended boson Josephson-junction model

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IOP PUBLISHING JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B: ATOMIC, MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 (8pp) doi:10.1088/0953-4075/44/2/025101
Atom-pair tunnelling-induced quantum
phase transition and scaling behaviour of
delity susceptibility in the extended
boson Josephson-junction model
J-L Liu and J-Q Liang
Institute of Theoretical Physics and Department of Physics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, Peoples
Republic of China
E-mail: jqliang@sxu.edu.cn
Received 14 September 2010, in nal form 11 November 2010
Published 23 December 2010
Online at stacks.iop.org/JPhysB/44/025101
Abstract
In this paper we theoretically investigate the nonlinear tunnelling of two weakly linked
BoseEinstein condensates in a double-well trap in a strong interaction regime with the
two-body interaction extended to neighbouring lattice sites. As a consequence the boson
Josephson-junction tunnelling depends on the atomatom interaction and the total atom
number as well. A crucial atom-pair tunnelling term, obtained directly from the extension,
results in signicant energy spectrum corrections and an abrupt change of the ground state
viewed as quantum phase transition. An atom-number oscillation state with a tunable relative
phase between two BoseEinstein condensates predicted for the rst time is seen to be a
degenerate ground state in an interaction region. The quantum phase transitions between
degenerate and non-degenerate ground states driven by the atom-pair tunnelling are analysed.
We show the scaling behaviours and the critical exponents of delity susceptibility, which can
classify the universality.
(Some gures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)
1. Introduction
The BoseEinstein condensates (BECs) in a double-well trap
were previously suggested [1] for the investigation of the
macroscopic quantum tunnelling analogous to the Josephson
junction [2], where atoms oscillate through the central barrier
with coherent phase difference of macroscopic wavefunctions
of the two BECs. Unlike the single-particle Josephson-
junction model some novel and unexpected quantum dynamic
phenomena [36] are explored in the BEC system due to the
two-body interaction of tunnelling atoms. It was demonstrated
that the tunnelling dynamics of BECs in a weak link can be
described by a nonrigid pendulum of momentum-dependent
length with the dynamic equations analogous to Josephson
oscillations only for the case of a weak two-body interaction.
For particular initial conditions and larger interaction, the
nonzero population difference is approached, which is
called macroscopic quantum self-trapping [46] and can be
described by a rotating pendulum [7]. It has become a hot
research topic to study the tunnelling dynamics in the strong
interaction regime both theoretically and experimentally
[8, 9] since the tunnelling theory of the many-body interacting
system is still lacking.
The system of cold atoms in optical lattices has become
a test ground of quantum mechanical principles in many
extraordinary aspects and the new prospective regime since
the strength of the atomatom interaction can be manipulated
using modern experimental techniques such as Feshbach
resonance, which can change the scattering length almost
arbitrarily. To date, the ultracold atomgas clouds in optical
lattices are only studied based on the well-known and widely
applied BoseHubbard Hamiltonian, which can well describe
the Josephson oscillations and nonlinear self-trapping of BECs
in a double-well trap [10] with weak atomatom interactions.
However, the strong interaction may fundamentally alter the
0953-4075/11/025101+08$33.00 1 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
tunnel conguration and result in a correlated tunnelling,
which was explored most recently in ultracold atoms [8, 9]. It
was shown that the boson Josephson-junction model (BJJM)
should be modied by a nonlinear interaction-dependent
tunnelling term in the case of a large number of atoms [11],
which leads to a considerable contribution to the tunnelling
effect. The tunnelling dynamics of a few atoms loaded in a
double-well trap has been studied by varying the interaction
strength from a weak to strong limit and it is shown for the
two-atom case that the tunnelling character changes from
Rabi oscillation to an atom-pair co-tunnelling process with
increasing interaction [8, 9]. A direct observation of the
correlated tunnelling was reported recently [8] and theoretical
analysis has also been presented in terms of two-body quantum
mechanics [9]. In a previous paper we pointed out that the
well-known BoseHubbard Hamiltonian, which is valid in
a relatively weak interaction regime, is not able to describe
the dynamics of atom-pair tunnelling and should be extended
in the strong interacting regime to include the atomatom
interaction of neighbouring lattice sites [12]. A peculiar
atom-pair hopping term resulted from the common two-
body interaction explains very well the recently reported
experimental observation of correlated tunnelling [12].
In this paper, we adopt the modied BoseHubbard
model as in [12] to study the nonlinear tunnelling effect
on the energy spectrum and dynamics of cold atoms in the
strong interaction region. A peculiar but fundamentally
important phenomenon occurs which states that atoms in
optical lattices with strong repulsive interactions can tunnel
together as an atom pair through the inter-well barriers.
This apparently contradictory effect, however, is a natural
result of two-body interaction in the second quantization
formulation of the quantumeld theory unlike the Cooper pairs
in the superconductivity resulted from attractive interaction
between two electrons by the exchange of phonons. In
the double-well case the Josephson-junction model has to
be extended to include the atom-pair tunnelling, which we
called the extended boson Josephson-junction model (EBJJM).
New dynamic states induced by the nonlinear tunnelling
effect, particularly, a degenerate ground state of atom-number
oscillation with a tunable relative phase are found in the
strong interaction regime. Quantum phase transitions (QPTs)
from non-degenerate to degenerate ground states driven by
the atom-pair tunnelling and scaling behaviours are analysed
based on the delity theory. We also show the analogy
between the EBJJM and the LipkinMeshkovGlick (LMG)
model.
This paper is organized as follows: in section 2, the
EBJJMin a symmetric double-well trap is derived in the strong
interaction regime. In section 3 we study the macroscopic
eigenstates and energy spectrum of the EBJJM by means of
the xed points of phase-space portraits. Section 4 is the
main part of the paper devoted to the atom-pair tunnelling-
induced QPT and critical behaviours. Finally we summarize
and discuss our results in section 5.
2. EBJJM beyond the on-site approximation of
two-body interaction
BECs in a double-well potential exhibit novel phenomena such
as atom-number self-trapping, the phase coherence oscillation
and so on, which were observed in recent experiments.
Generally, this system can be described by the BoseHubbard
model, which, however, is valid in the weak interaction
region. For strong interaction we derive a Hamiltonian in the
framework of second quantization for a symmetric double-well
potential, which can be written as
H = H
0
+ H
int
where
H
0
=
_
(x)
+
_

d
2
dx
2
+ v
trap
(x)
_
(x) dx
H
int
=
1
2
_
(x
1
)
+
(x
2
)
+
U(|x
1
x
2
|)(x
2
)(x
1
) dx
1
dx
2
,
and (x) denotes the eld operator of the condensate. In
the weak coupling case of two condensates, which can be
guaranteed by a high barrier making the energy-level space
between the rst and second excited states much larger than
the energy splitting of the ground state, thus we can adopt
the two-mode approximation to expend the eld operator in
terms of variational wavefunctions
1
(x) and
2
(x) localized
respectively in the rst and second wells [4, 10, 11, 13]:
(x, t ) = a
1
(t )
1
(x) + a
2
(t )
2
(x).
Taking the atomatominteraction between neighbouring wells
into account besides the usual on-site one we obtain the
Hamiltonian for a symmetric double-well potential [12] with
a constant energy setting to zero:
H = J
N
_
a

1
a
2
+ a
1
a

2
_
+
U
0
2
2

i=1
n
i
(n
i
1)
+2U
2
n
1
n
2
+
U
2
2
_
a

1
a

1
a
2
a
2
+ a
1
a
1
a

2
a

2
_
(1)
where a
i
_
a

i
_
denotes the boson annihilation (creation)
operator in the ith well and the total atom-number operator
is a conserved quantity n
1
+ n
2
= N. The hopping coupling
constant
J
N
= [J U
1
(N 1)] (2)
depends on the total atom number N and modies the
Josephson-junction-like single-atom tunnelling J.
The coupling parameters are dened as the usual overlap
integrals:

J =
_
dx
1
(x)
_

d
2
dx
2
+ v
trap
(x)
_

2
(x)
=
_
dx
2
(x)
_

d
2
dx
2
+ v
trap
(x)
_

1
(x)
U
0
= g
_
dx
4
1
(x) = g
_
dx
4
2
(x)
U
1
= g
_
dx
3
1
(x)
2
(x)
= g
_
dx
3
2
(x)
1
(x)
U
2
= g
_
dx
2
1
(x)
2
2
(x).
(3)
Obviously, here we consider only the -function interaction
potential for U(|x
1
x
2
|) with g = 4a
s
h
2
/m, and a
s
being
2
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
the s-wave scattering length. U
0
is the usual on-site interaction
strength and U
1
, U
2
are the intersite interaction strengths. The
last part of the Hamiltonian (equation (1)) with the coupling
constant U
2
describes a novel atom-pair tunnelling process.
The dynamics of condensate described by the eld
operator (x, t ) can be investigated by the Heisenberg
equation in Heisenberg picture. At zero temperature and
for a large atom number N we can use C-numbers a
1
(a
2
)
instead of the corresponding quantum operators (mean-eld
approximation) and then the Heisenberg equations for the C-
numbers a
i
and a

i
corresponding to the probability amplitudes
in the two wells can be written as a matrix equation [14]
i

t
(t ) =

H(t ) (4)
with the state (t ) = [a
1
a
2
]
T
and the effective matrix-
Hamiltonian given by

H =
_
U

0
|a
2
|
2
(J
N
U
2
a

1
a
2
)
(J
N
U
2
a
1
a

2
) U

0
|a
1
|
2
_
, (5)
where we have normalized the parameters as U

0
(U
0

2U
2
)/N, U
1
U
1
/N, U
2
U
2
/N, J
N
= J U
1
(N
1)/N.
The nonlinear eigen-equation (4) can be solved
semiclassically. To this end we assume a
1
=

n
1
e
i
1
,
a
2
=

n
2
e
i
2
(
1
and
2
being the phases of two condensates).
The relative phase =
2

1
and the average of atom-
number population difference = (n
2
n
1
)/N are regarded
as the canonical conjugate variables in EBJJM. Substituting
the conjugate variables and into equation (4), we obtain
the canonical equations

t
= 2J
N
_
1
2
sin() sin(2)U
2
(1
2
),

t
= J
N
2

1
2
cos() U

0
+ U
2
cos(2).
(6)
The equivalent classical Hamiltonian corresponding to the
above canonical equations is seen to be
H
c
= 2 cos()J
N
_
1
2

1
2
cos(2)U
2
(1
2
)
1
2
U

2
, (7)
in which the second term is totally new compared with the
effective Hamiltonian of the BJJM.
3. Fixed points of the phase-space portraits and
eigenvectors
It has been demonstrated that the eigenvectors of the nonlinear
equation (6) correspond to extreme energy or the xed points
in the phase-space portraits of the classical Hamiltonian H
c
[15]. In this paper we show that the EBJJM gives rise to more
eigenvectors than that of the BJJM [16].
Since H
c
is a conserved quantity H
c
(, ) = E, the
phase-space trajectories are constrained on the contours of
the constant energy E called phase-space portraits. The
intersite interactions result in a signicant modication of the
phase-space trajectories, although parameters U
1
and U
2
are
much smaller compared with the on-site one U
0
, which as
a matter of fact can be evaluated roughly with the Gaussian
(A) (E) (I)
(B) (F) (J)
(C) (G) (K)
(D) (H) (L)
Figure 1. Phase-space portraits for different values of the coupling
constant J = 0.08, J = 0.06, J = 0.04 and J = 0.02 (from top to
bottom). Fixed points are marked respectively with p1, p2, p3, p4
and p5. Plots (A)(H) are for the EBBJM and plots (I)(L)
correspond to the BBJM.
Wannier functions and function potential [12] such that
U
2

2
U
0,
U
1

3/2
U
0
, where = exp(
2
s
1/2
/4), s =
/E
r
with and E
r
being the well depth and lattice recoil
energy respectively. Using experimental values of and E
r
we have evaluated the parameter values as U
2
= 0.02, U
1
=
U
3/4
2
= 0.053 in the energy scale of U
0
= 1. The variation
range of the coupling constant J is assumed from 1 to 0.01.
With the standard numerical procedure, phase-space portraits
of both the EBJJM (U
2
= 0.02, U
1
= 0.053) and the BJJM
(U
2
= U
1
= 0) in the strong atomatom interaction region
are shown in gures 1(A) (H) and (I)(L) respectively in the
coupling constant range 0 < J < U
1
+ U
2
, where the xed
points are marked respectively with p1, p2, p3, p4 and p5.
3.1. Fixed points and eigenstates of the BJJM
The xed points of phase-space portraits are the points of
extreme energy corresponding to eigenvectors of the nonlinear
system [15]. Referring to the canonical equation (6), the xed
points obtained by solving the extreme-value equation,

2J
N
_
1
2
sin() sin(2)U
2
(1
2
) = 0,
J
N
2

1
2
cos() U

0
+ U
2
cos(2) = 0,
(8)
3
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
(a) (b)
(c)
Figure 2. Adiabatic energy eigenvalues of eigenvectors
p1, p2, p3, p4 and p5 as a function of the coupling constant J
varying from 0.01 to 0.1 (a) and 0.1 to 1 (b) for the EBJJM. The
lower panel (c) is the corresponding plot for the BJJM as a
comparison.
are marked with p1, p2, p3, p4 and p5 respectively in gure 1.
The phase-space portraits of the BJJM are depicted in
gures 1(I)(L) in which we nd two elliptic xed points p2
and p4 in the strong interaction region (fromJ = 0.02 to 0.08).
The elliptic xed point is a true energy extremum with nite
frequency and is able to follow adiabatically with the variation
of the controlling parameter J. In our case p2 indicates the
zero average of atom-number population difference and zero
relative phase as well, while p4 corresponds to the -phase
self-trapping. In the eigenstate p2 atoms are equally populated
in the two wells showing the property of insulator because
of the strong interaction. The energy-eigenvalue variation
with respect to J is given in the lower panel of gure 2(c),
where we see that p2 (solid line) is the ground state in the
whole parameter region. The -phase self-trapping (p4) is an
excited state of highest eigenenergy existing only in the strong
interaction region when J < 0.5 (dashed line in gure 2(c)).
The hyperbolic xed point p1, which is a saddle point of
energy corresponding to unstable eigenstate, indicates the zero
average of atom-number population difference with a relative
phase . The energy eigenvalue of p1 coincides with that of
p2 at J = 0 and p4 at J 0.5 showing a two-fold degeneracy
at these points. However, the ground state does not have abrupt
change and there is no QPT at all in the BJJM.
3.2. Eigenvectors of the EBJJM and abrupt change of the
ground state
The eigenvectors of the EBJJM are analytically solved
and compared with the BJJM showing a great difference.
Obviously, in the less strong interaction region when J >
U
1
+ U
2
0.073, three eigenvectors p2 (ground state),
p1(rst excited state), p4 (-phase self-trapping) and their
corresponding energies are seen to be almost the same
as in BJJM [16], as shown in gures 1(A), (E), (I) and
gures 2(b), (c). However in the stronger interaction region
when 0 < J < U
1
+ U
2
, there are novel and signicant
corrections of the energy spectrum and the structure of phase-
space portraits. In the interaction region (J = 0.060.04),
we nd a new elliptic xed point p5 (besides p2, p1 and
p4 ) surrounded by periodic orbits, which being a ground
state in this parameter region (see gure 2(a) dashed line)
corresponds to a state of atom-number oscillation with zero
average of population difference. An interesting observation
is that the relative phase of the stationary state p5, which
does not exist in the BJJM, can be tuned by varying the
coupling constant J seen from gures 1(A)(C), where the
relative phase of p5 varies from 0 to . The ground
state p2 of the BJJM gradually changes to a hyperbolic
point in the EBJJM along with the increase of interaction
or decrease of J (see gures 1 (B)(D)). The unstable
hyperbolic point p1 in the BJJM becomes an elliptic xed
point and nally coincides with p5 (see gures 1 (C), (D)).
Anewstable state (elliptic xed point) p3 of the EBJJM, which
indicates the zero-phase self-trapping (gures 1 (G), (H)) has
no corresponding state in the BJJM. From gures 2(a), (c) it is
seen that in the super-strong interaction region ,when J is less
than the critical value marked by T
1
, p1 becomes the ground
state (p2 is the rst excited state) while between the critical
points T
1
and T
2
the ground state is p5. Above the critical
point T
2
the ground state becomes p2. The QPT takes place
at the critical points T
1
(J = U
1
U
2
) and T
2
(J = U
1
+ U
2
).
Moreover the phase-space portraits of the EBJJM display
a number change of xed points or the equivalent eigenvectors,
which increases from 3 (p1, p2, p4; gures 1(A), (E)), in
the region U
1
+ U
2
< J < U
1
+ (U

0
U
2
)/2, to 4 (p1,
p2, p4 or p3 and p5; gures 1(B), (F), (C), (G)) in the region
U
1
U
2
< J < U
1
+ U
2
. When the atomatom interaction
becomes super strong in the region 0 < J < U
1
U
2
, the
number of eigenvectors decreases again to 3, however with
the -phase self-trapping p4 replaced by the zero-phase self-
trapping p3 (see gures 1(D), (H)). Two new xed points p3
and p5, which are stable states, are seen to be generated by
the atom-pair tunnelling.
In the BJJM the ground state p2 describes the atom-
number oscillation between two wells and the oscillation
amplitude is gradually squeezed with the increase of
interaction seen from gures 1(J)(L) attending to a stable
state of equal atom-number population in the two wells, since
the single-atom tunnelling is suppressed and the strong atom
atom interaction forces atoms equally populated in the two
wells. However the situation is very different in the EBJJM,
where the elliptic xed point p5, which is a gapless ground
state between critical points T
1
and T
2
(see the next section) and
coincides with p1 at the critical point T
1
. p1 becomes a stable
atom-number oscillation state in the super-strong interaction
region (below T
1
) resulted by the atom-pair tunnelling. It is
found that the relative phase of the oscillation state can be
tuned by adiabatic variation of the parameter J in a wide range.
To verify the robust phase control we have numerically solved
equation (6) with the fourth- and fth-order step-adaptive
RungeKutta algorithm to nd the time evolution of conjugate
variables , near the elliptic point p5, which is expected to
be able to follow the slowly varying parameter J compared
4
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
with the fundamental frequency of periodic orbits around the
xed point. These states with the tunable phase by adiabatic
variation of the parameter J, can be used to realize the qubit in
quantum computation.
4. Quantum critical scaling of delity susceptibility
The atom-pair tunnelling in the EBJJM is the most essential
difference compared with the usual BJJM [16], which leads to
the structure change of the ground state spectrum viewed as
QPT. We nowturn to the full quantummechanical calculations
to demonstrate the QPT and critical behaviour at the critical
points. The critical points of QPT T
1
and T
2
in gure 2(a)
possess the same critical behaviour illustrated in terms of
the role of delity, which is a measure of similarity between
states useful in quantum-information theory [17] and quantum
critical phenomena [18]. A dramatic change in the ground-
state structure around the quantum critical point results in a
great delity difference of the two ground states on both sides
of the critical point. The delity denoted by F is dened as
the overlap between two ground states with an innitessimal
variation of parameter strength (J here) such as |
0
(J) and
|
0
(J + J) [19]:
F(J, J) = |
0
(J)|
0
(J + J)|. (9)
The Hamiltonian (equation (1)) of the quantum many-body
system can be divided into two parts
H = H
0
+ J
N
H

where H

=
_
a

1
a
2
+ a
1
a

2
_
is the driving Hamiltonian with a
normalized coupling strength J
N
and the rest part H
0
describes
the atomatom interaction only. Assume that the Hamiltonian
H has orthogonal eigenstates
H|
n
(J) = E
n
|
n
(J).
With an innitesimal variation of the parameter J J + J,
the ground state |
0
(J + J evaluated by means of the
perturbation method is obtained up to the second order as [19].
Substituting the state |
0
(J + J) into the delity denition
(equation (9)) and noting the orthogonality of the eigenstates

m
(J)|
n
(J) =
mn
we obtain up to the second order of J
F
2
(J, J) = 1 J
2

n=0
|H

n0
|
2
(E
n
E
0
)
2
, (10)
from which we see that the coefcient of J
2
actually denes
a response of delity to the innitesimal variation of J. From
this point of view, the concept of delity susceptibility (FS)
[19]

F
(J) = lim
J0
2 ln F(J + J)
J
2
is introduced and can be evaluated as [19]

F
(J) =

n=0
|
n
(J)|H

|
0
(J)|
2
(E
n
E
0
)
2
. (11)
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 3. Energy gap E between ground and the rst excited
states as a function of the coupling constant J (a), relative-phase
versus J (b) and
F
versus J (c) for J varying from 0 to 0.08 and
atom number N = 60, 80, 100, respectively.
For a nite atomnumber N, the Hamiltonian (equation (1))
can be exactly diagonalized with the basis vectors of the atom-
number state |m, Nm, in which mdenotes the atomnumber
populated in the well-1, and thus the eigenstates
|
n
(J) =
N

m=0
c
(n)
m
|m, N m (12)
along with the eigen-energy E
n
are obtained. So we are able
to evaluate numerically the FS in relation with the QPT.
Seen from section 3, the -phase-oscillation ground state
(elliptic xed point p1) adiabatically changes into the ground
state p5 with the increase of J at the critical point T
1
and
continuously shifts to the ground state p2 at the critical point
T
2
. As a comparison with the FS the level space between the
ground- and rst-excited states (E = E
1
E
0
) is plotted
in gure 3(a) for total atom number N = 60 (solid line),
80 (dashed) and 100 (dotted) respectively. The new ground
state p5 between the two critical points T
1
and T
2
is doubly
degenerate in the limit N , whereas for the nite N,
the level space is nonzero but decreases with the increase of
N (see gure 3(a)). The level space below T
1
(EBJJM non-
degenerate phase) and above T
2
(BJJM non-degenerate phase)
is almost symmetric however in the super-strong region the
oscillation is induced by the atom-pair tunnelling while in the
5
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
(a)
(b)
Figure 4. J
m
versus N (a), and
F
(J
m
) versus N with various U
2
(b).
Table 1. Scaling exponent at various U
2
obtained by sampling system size in different regions.
U
2
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06
(N [100, 200]) 1.232 11 1.258 65 1.270 95 1.277 69 1.2807 1.285 19
(N [200, 300]) 1.269 81 1.285 25 1.291 47 1.295 31 1.299 88 1.299 78
BJJM non-degenerate phase it is resulted by the single-atom
tunnelling.
In the BJJM we have a non-degenerate ground state only.
The coherent phase difference shown in gure 3(b) is nothing
but the angle of the correlation function of the two wells
[8, 12]:
= angle
0
|a

2
a
1
|
0

= angle
_
N1

m=0
_
(m + 1)(N m)c
(0)
m
c
(0)
m+1
_
in the ground state p5 obtained from the eigenstate |
0
(J)
in equation (12), which continuously changes from to zero
in the interaction region between T
1
and T
2
with vanishing
level space. The phase-difference tends to the classical result
= arccos
_
JU
1
U
2
_
obtained from equation (8) for N
and U
1
U
2
< J < U
1
+ U
2
.
The FS curves as a function of J in gure 3(c) for atom
numbers 60 (solid), 80 (dashed) and 100 (dotted) show two
sharp peaks at the two critical points. The coupling constant
corresponding to the maximum value of FS denoted by J
m
is
depicted as a function of the total atomnumber Nin gure 4(a),
where the J
m
N curve ( solid line) to t the numerical data
(squares) can be described formally by the equation
J
m
= AN
B
+ C (13)
with A = 0.116 72, B = 0.64 and C = 0.033 46. The critical
point
J
c
lim
N
J
m
= C = 0.033 46 (14)
is obtained in the thermodynamic limit, N . In the
vicinity of the critical point the scaling behaviour of J
m
can
be found from equations (13) and (14), and is seen to be
characterized by the power-law decay in the large N:
J
c
J
m
N

(15)
with the exponent being = B = 0.64. With the variation of
U
2
the exponent does not change, and neither does the critical
point J
c
which follows the classical result J
c
= U
1
U
2
.
In the previous analysis of critical phenomena of delity, it
has been pointed out that the intensive FS scales in the vicinity
of the critical point J
c
generally like [20, 21]

F
(J)
1
(J J
c
)

(16)
with being the corresponding exponent to be determined.
The maximum value of FS at J
m
for a nite system scales
following the power-law

F
(J
m
) N

. (17)
Figure 4(b) is the plots of the maximal FS as a function of N
for various U
2
and the power-lawexponent is extracted from
the slope of the straight line, which ts exactly the numerical
data of
FS
(J
m
) in the logarithmic scale. The corresponding
values of the exponent for different U
2
are obtained by the
results shown in table 1, which vary slightly in the nite region
of N. While in a larger scaling region the power-law exponent
can be estimated numerically as a universal constant value
1.31, which does not depend on the parameter U
2
. The
FS becomes divergent at the critical point as N ,
demonstrating a Landau-type transition.
Following [20, 21] we introduce a compact function
to include the above two asymptotic behaviours given in
equations (16) and (17):

F
(J) =
G
Q(J J
m
)

+ N

(18)
where G 102 in this case is a constant, and Q is a nonzero
function of J independent of the atom number N. From the
compact function (equation (18)), FS is seen to be a universal
function of the driving parameter N

(J J
m
), such that

F
(J
m
)
F
(J)

F
(J)
= f (N

(J J
m
)) (19)
6
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
(a)
(b)
Figure 5. The nite-size scaling analysis for system sizes N = 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, respectively. f (the rescaled FS) as a function of
N

(J J
m
) with = 0.64.
Figure 6. System-size analysis of f as a function of N

(J J
m
) with = 0.64 for U
2
= 0.01, 0.03, 0.05 from the top to bottom panels
respectively.
7
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 44 (2011) 025101 J L Liu and J-Q Liang
where is a critical exponent and f (x) is an even deviation
function around x = 0. FS
F
(J) as a function of J is
plotted in gure 5(a) for atom numbers 60, 70, 80, 90, 100
respectively. Figure 5(b) is the plots of the universal function
f (N

(J J
m
)) for the same atom numbers as in gure 5(a)
(i.e. N = 60, 70, 80, 90, 100), which fall into a single curve
for all the different atom numbers with the critical exponent
determined as = 0.64. For different values of U
2
=
0.01, 0.03, 0.05, the plots of the universal function also fall
into a single curve with the atom number from 50 to 250,
as shown in gure 6. It is seen that the critical exponent
0.64 does not depend on the parameter U
2
. Combining
equation (18) and (19), a relation among the three exponents
can be found as
=

2. (20)
In the usual study of scaling behaviour for the lattice model,
N is regarded as lattice size, i.e. the total number of lattice
sites, while in our system of the BEC in a double-well trap N
is the total atom number. Although the physical systems are
quite different the Hamiltonian is actually of the same type. To
this end we introduce the pseudoangular momentum operators
[12] dened by
S
x
=
1
2
_
a

1
a
2
+ a
1
a

2
_
,
S
y
=
1
2i
_
a

1
a
2
a
1
a

2
_
,
S
z
=
1
2
_
a

1
a
1
a

2
a
2
_
with the total angular momentum S
2
=
N
2
_
N
2
+ 1
_
; thus the
Hamiltonian (equation (1)) can be written as
H = 2J
N
S
x
+ K
1
S
2
z
+ K
2
S
2
x
(21)
with the parameters given by K
1
= U
0
U
2,
and K
2
= 2U
2
[12]. This is an LMG-type model Hamiltonian [11, 12, 22, 23],
in which the additional K
2
-termcompared with the BJJMis due
to atom-pair tunnelling and gives rise to the QPT in the strong
interaction region. From the viewpoint of the coupled spin
chain we regard S
k
=

N
i=1

i
k
_
2(k = x, y, z), as collective
spin with N being the total number of lattice sites. Thus the
nite-size scaling has obvious physical meaning. In our case
the FS is always an intensive quantity, which is different from
the LMG model considered in [22], with the relation among
three exponents (equation (20)) being always satised around
the critical points of QPT from non-degenerate to degenerate
phases. Thus, the universality class can be characterized by
the critical exponents of the FS [21].
5. Conclusion
We show that the atom-pair tunnelling in the EBJJM for two
weakly coupled BECs in the strong atomatom interaction
regime leads to crucial modications of the energy spectrum
and dynamics as well [4, 6], while in the weak interaction
case the effects of the two-body interaction of nearest-
neighbouring sites are negligibly small and the results of
the EBJJM reduce to that of the well-known BJJM [16]. In
the exactly solvable system of BECs in a symmetric double-
well potential, the atom-pair tunnelling-induced QPTs from
non-degenerate to degenerate phases are demonstrated. We
have presented explicitly the nite-size scaling behaviours and
critical exponents of FS which can be used for classication of
the universality in the quantumcritical phenomena. Moreover,
the new degenerate ground state, i.e. atom-number oscillation
with tunable relative phase between two BECs may be used to
realize qubit in quantum computation.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Nature Science
Foundation of China (grant no 10775091).
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