Collective modes of two-species Bose–Einstein condensates in a Josephson junction barrier

Abstract The ultracold atoms are an ideal platform to implement atomtronics and Josephson junctions analogous to superconducting circuits. The collective modes of a Bose gas split by a potential barrier have been known. However, the role of barriers on the collective excitation spectra of ultracold atomic mixtures has not been examined. Here, we examine the low-lying collective modes of (an)harmonically trapped quasi-one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) in a Josephson barrier by employing the variational approach and Bogoliubov theory. We first show that the anharmonicity of the external potential leads to an increase in the critical barrier strength of mode softening in a single-species condensate. The Josephson barrier drives the softening of in-phase and out-of-phase dipole modes of two-species BECs, and consequently leads to two additional zero-energy Goldstone modes in the miscible phase, in agreement with the variational approach. Furthermore, the sandwich immiscible state results in an additional Goldstone mode due to the barrier, in contrast to the spatially symmetry-broken side-by-side profile. Our results unveil the distinct collective response of the Josephson barrier in binary mixtures owing to interspecies atomic correlations.