Aharonov-Bohm oscillations of bosonic matter-wave beams in the presence of disorder and interaction

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 synthetic magnetic flux φ. We specifically investigate the effects both of a disorder potential and 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. We find that a correlated disorder suppress the AB oscillations leaving thereby place to weaker amplitude, half period oscillations on transmission, namely the Aronov-Al’tshuler-Spivak (AAS) oscillations. The competition between disorder and interaction leads to a flip of the transmission at the AB flux φ = π. This flip could be a possible preliminary signature of an inversion of the coherent backscattering (CBS) peak. Our study paves the way to an analytical description of the inversion of that peak.