A Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential, where atoms are incoupled to one side and extracted from the other, can in the mean-field limit be described by the nonlinear Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) with a \({\mathcal PT}\)-symmetric external potential. If the strength of the in- and outcoupling is increased two \({\mathcal PT}\) broken states bifurcate from the \({\mathcal PT}\)-symmetric ground state. At this bifurcation point a stability change of the ground state is expected. However, it is observed that this stability change does not occur exactly at the bifurcation but at a slightly different strength of the in-/outcoupling effect. We investigate a Bose-Einstein condensate in a \({\mathcal PT}\)-symmetric double-\(\delta\) potential and calculate the stationary states. The ground state’s stability is analysed by means of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations and it is shown that the difference in the strength of the in-/outcoupling between the bifurcation and the stability change can be completely explained by the norm-dependency of the nonlinear term in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2354
Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Chaotic Dynamics (nlin.CD)