Dynamical formation of two-fold fragmented many-body state induced by an impurity in a double-well

Abstract

Abstract We unravel the correlated quantum quench dynamics of a single impurity immersed in a bosonic environment confined in an one-dimensional double-well potential. A particular emphasis is placed on the structure of the time-evolved many-body (MB) wave function by relying on a Schmidt decomposition whose coefficients directly quantify the number of configurations that are macroscopically populated. For a non-interacting bosonic bath and weak postquench impurity-bath interactions, we observe the dynamical formation of a two-fold fragmented MB state which is related to intra-band excitation processes of the impurity and manifests as a two-body phase separation (clustering) between the two species for repulsive (attractive) interactions. Increasing the postquench impurity-bath coupling strength leads to the destruction of the two-fold fragmentation since the impurity undergoes additional inter-band excitation dynamics. By contrast, a weakly interacting bath suppresses excitations of the bath particles and consequently the system attains a weakly fragmented MB state. Our results explicate the interplay of intra- and inter-band impurity excitations for the dynamical generation of fragmented MB states in multi-well traps and for designing specific entangled impurity states.