Static properties of two linearly coupled discrete circuits

Abstract

Bosonic two-ring ladders constitute an important class of atomtronic circuits, where coherent current flows not only can offer a new insight into many-body physics, but also can play the role of actual degrees of freedom, and hence allow for a viable implementation of cold-atom based devices and qubit systems. In this work, we exhaustively investigate the ground state properties and the low-lying energy spectrum of two linearly coupled Bose-Hubbard rings. We show that the competition among interactions, intra- and inter-ring hopping processes gives place to a rather rich physical scenario, where Mott-like states and (different kinds of) superfluid-like states emerge. The latter ones depend also on the (in)commensurate filling of the atoms. Our analysis, carried out within a simple analytical framework and by means of the exact numerical diagonalization of the system Hamiltonian, provides one with a rather complete characterization of the static properties of the two-ring ladder, including, but not limited to, coherence, fragmentation, correlations, and entanglement. We complement our investigation by studying how these indicators depend on the commensurability of the total number of bosons with respect to the total number of sites and show that the two stacked rings are always entangled for an odd number of atoms.