Transport of Bose-Einstein Condensates through Aharonov-Bohm rings

We study the one-dimensional (1D) transport properties of an ultracold gas of Bose-Einstein condensed atoms through Aharonov-Bohm (AB) rings. Our system consists of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that is outcoupled from a magnetic trap into a 1D waveguide which is made of two semi-infinite leads that join a ring geometry exposed to a magnetic flux φ. We specifically investigate the effects of a small atom-atom contact interaction strength on the AB oscillations. The main numerical tools that we use for this purpose are a mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) description and the truncated Wigner (tW) method. The latter allows for the description of incoherent transport and corresponds to a classical sampling of the evolution of the quantum bosonic many-body state through effective GP trajectories. We find that resonant transmission peaks move with an increasing interaction strength and can be suppressed for sufficiently strong interaction. We also observe that the coherent transmission blockade due to destructive interference at the AB flux φ = π is very robust with respect to the interaction strength.