Abstract
We report on the experimental observation of dynamic localization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shaken optical lattice, both for sinusoidal and square-wave forcing. The formulation of this effect in terms of a quasienergy band collapse, backed by the excellent agreement of the observed collapse points with the theoretical predictions, suggests the feasibility of systematic quasienergy band engineering.
- Received 23 September 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.013611
©2009 American Physical Society
Synopsis
Shaking atoms to make them stop
Published 16 January 2009
Ultracold atoms in an optical lattice share a lot of physics with electrons in a crystalline solid and it is a system that is often much easier to control. By forcing an optical lattice to vary with time, it is possible to engineer the energy of cold atoms and essentially bring them to a halt.
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