Regular and chaotic behavior of collective atomic motion in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We theoretically study binary Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in a single-well harmonic potential to probe the dynamics of collective atomic motion. The idea is to choose tunable scattering lengths through Feshbach resonances such that the ground-state wave function for two types of the condensates are spatially immiscible where one of the condensates, located at the center of the potential trap, can be effectively treated as a potential barrier between bilateral condensates of the second type of atoms. In the case of small wave-function overlap between bilateral condensates, one can parametrize their spatial part of the wave functions in the two-mode approximation together with the time-dependent population imbalance z and the phase difference phi between two wave functions. The condensate in the middle can be approximated by a Gaussian wave function with the displacement of the condensate center xi. As driven by the time-dependent displacement of the central condensate, we find the Josephson oscillations of the collective atomic motion between bilateral condensates as well as their anharmonic generalization of macroscopic self-trapping effects. In addition, with the increase in the wave-function overlap of bilateral condensates by properly choosing tunable atomic scattering lengths, the chaotic oscillations are found if the system departs from the state of a fixed point. The Melnikov approach with a homoclinic solution of the derived z, phi, and xi equations can successfully justify the existence of chaos. All results are consistent with the numerical solutions of the full time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equations.