Nonlinear Landau-Zener processes in a periodic driving field

Effects of a periodic driving field on Landau-Zener (LZ) processes are studied using a nonlinear two-mode model that describes the mean-field dynamics of a many-body system. A variety of different dynamical phenomena in different parameter regimes of the driving field are discussed and analyzed. These include shifted, weakened, or enhanced phase dependence of nonlinear LZ (NLZ) processes, nonlinearity-enhanced population transfer in the adiabatic limit and Hamiltonian chaos on the mean-field level. The emphasis of this work is based on how the impact of a periodic driving field on LZ processes with self-interaction differs from those without self-interaction. Apart from gaining knowledge of driven NLZ processes, our findings can be used to gauge the strength of nonlinearity and for efficient manipulation of the mean-field dynamics of many-body systems