Nonadiabatic creation of macroscopic superpositions with strongly correlated one-dimensional bosons in a ring trap

We consider a strongly interacting quasi-one-dimensional Bose gas on a tight ring trap subjected to a localized barrier potential. We explore the possibility of forming a macroscopic superposition of a rotating and a nonrotating state under nonequilibrium conditions, achieved by a sudden quench of the barrier velocity. Using an exact solution for the dynamical evolution in the impenetrable-boson (Tonks-Girardeau) limit, we find an expression for the many-body wave function corresponding to a superposition state. The superposition is formed when the barrier velocity is tuned close to multiples of an integer or half-integer number of Coriolis flux quanta. As a consequence of the strong interactions, we find that (i) the state of the system can be mapped onto a macroscopic superposition of two Fermi spheres rather than two macroscopically occupied single-particle states as in a weakly interacting gas, and (ii) the barrier velocity should be larger than the sound velocity to better discriminate the two components of the superposition.