Classical bifurcation at the transition from Rabi to Josephson dynamics

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Nov 12;105(20):204101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.204101. Epub 2010 Nov 12.

Abstract

We report on the experimental demonstration of the internal bosonic Josephson effect in a rubidium spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. The measurement of the full time dynamics in phase space allows the characterization of the theoretically predicted π-phase modes and quantitatively confirms analytical predictions, revealing a classical bifurcation. Our results suggest that this system is a model system which can be tuned from classical to the quantum regime and thus is an important step towards the experimental investigation of entanglement generation close to critical points.