Abstract
We demonstrate that a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice forms a reconfigurable matter-wave structure with a band-gap spectrum, which resembles a nonlinear photonic crystal for light waves. We study in detail the case of a two-dimensional square optical lattice and show that this atomic band-gap structure allows nonlinear localization of atomic Bloch waves in the form of two-dimensional matter-wave gap solitons.
- Received 8 November 2002
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.160407
©2003 American Physical Society