Nonlinear Propagation of Coherent States through Avoided Energy Level Crossing

We study the propagation of wave packets for a one-dimensional system of two coupled Schr"odinger equations with a cubic nonlinearity, in the semi-classical limit. Couplings are induced by the nonlinearity and by the potential, whose eigenvalues present an “avoided crossing”: at one given point, the gap between them reduces as the semi-classical parameter becomes smaller. For data which are coherent states polarized along an eigenvector of the potential, we prove that when the wave function propagates through the avoided crossing point, there are transitions between the eigenspaces at leading order. We analyze the nonlinear effects, which are noticeable away from the crossing point, but see that in a small time interval around this point, the nonlinearity’s role is negligible at leading order, and the transition probabilities can be computed with the linear Landau-Zener formula.