Josephson Dynamics of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Accelerated Double Well Potential

Motivated by recent experiment on Bloch Oscillation of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in accelerated optical lattices, we consider the Josephson dynamics of a BEC in an accelerated double well potential. We show that acceleration suppresses coherent population oscillation between the two wells. Accelerating the double well renders the Josephson coupling energy time dependent and this emerges as a source of dissipation.This dissipative mechanism helps to stabilize the system.The results are used to interpret recent experimental results[reference 16].