Evolution of the Interference of Bose Condensates Released from a Double-Well Potential

The interference pattern of two Bose–Einstein condensates released from a double-well potential for different holding times is theoretically investigated using a decoupled two-mode Bose–Hubbard model. For two coherently separated condensates, the interference displays a periodic behavior, which is closely related to the atomic interaction. A remarkable parity effect is found in the interference patterns. For certain holding times, the even/odd total number of atoms would result in different interference fringes. The influences of different initial conditions on the evolution of interference and the observation of parity effects are discussed.