Need for relativistic corrections in the analysis of spatial adiabatic passage of matter waves

We investigate the coherent transport of a single particle and a Bose-Einstein condensate between the two extreme traps of a triple-well potential by means of the spatial adiabatic passage technique. This matter wave transport technique consists of adiabatically following an energy eigenstate of the system that only populates the vibrational ground states of the two extreme wells and presents at all times a node in the central region. Unraveling the (nonlinear) time-dependent Schrödinger equation in terms of Bohmian quantum trajectories, we show that by slowing down the total time duration of the transport process, Bohmian velocities in the central region are orders of magnitude larger than the mean atomic velocities. This leads to a very counterintuitive effect: in the regime of almost perfect adiabaticity, these velocities require relativistic corrections to properly address the transfer process and avoid superluminal propagation. © 2012 American Physical Society.