Coherent control of mesoscopic tunneling

Christoph Weiss

Institut für Physik, Universität Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany

It is has been demonstrated that self-trapping occurs for small weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates in a double well potential. Here, it is predicted that a pulse can be applied such that the interaction is effectively switched off. Thus, controlled tunneling occurs in a region of self-trapping. The tunneling corresponds to Rabi oscillations for non-interacting particles. As the interaction is effectively switched off only along the trajectory of a solution of the Schroedinger equation, this process is essentially different from a Feshbach resonance. It is also demonstrated numerically how Schroedinger cat states can be produced.