Multistability and Critical Fluctuation in a Split Bose-Einstein Condensate

By using a two-mode description, we show that there exist the multistability, phase transition and associatedcritical fluctuations in the macroscopic tunnelling process between the halves of a double-well trap containing a Bose-Einstein condensate. The phase transition that two of the triple stable states and an unstable state merge into one stablestate or a reverse process takes place whenever the ratio of the mean field energy per particle to the tunnelling energygoes across a critical value of order one. The critical fluctuation phenomenon corresponds to squeezed states for thephase difference between the two wells accompanying with large fluctuations of atom numbers.