title: Unstable avoided crossing in coupled spinor condensates.
abstract: We consider the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate with two internal states, coupled through a coherent drive. We focus on a specific quench protocol, in which the sign of the coupling field is suddenly changed. At a mean-field level, the system is transferred from a minimum to a maximum of the coupling energy and can remain dynamically stable, in spite of the development of negative-frequency modes. In the presence of a nonzero detuning between the two states, the "charge" and "spin" modes couple, giving rise to an unstable avoided crossing. This phenomenon is generic to systems with two dispersing modes away from equilibrium and constitutes an example of class-I(o) nonequilibrium pattern formation in quantum systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA and Department of Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Nathan R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Bernier
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 20138, USA.
authors.forename: Emanuele G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Dalla Torre
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 20138, USA.
authors.forename: Eugene
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Demler