title: Landau-Zener sweeps and sudden quenches in coupled Bose-Hubbard chains.
abstract: We simulate numerically the dynamics of strongly correlated bosons in a two-leg ladder subject to a time-dependent energy bias between the two chains. When all atoms are initially in the leg with higher energy, we find a drastic reduction of the interchain particle transfer for slow linear sweeps, in quantitative agreement with recent experiments. This effect is preceded by a rapid broadening of the quasimomentum distribution of atoms, signaling the presence of a bath of low-energy excitations in the chains. We further investigate the scenario of quantum quenches to fixed values of the energy bias. We find that for a large enough density the momentum distribution relaxes to that of an equilibrium thermal state with the same energy.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 80333 München, Germany.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kasztelan
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Trotzky
authors.forename: Y-A
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bloch
authors.forename: I P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: McCulloch
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schollwöck
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Orso