Disorder Induced Regular Dynamics in Oscillating Lattices

Thomas Wulf, Benno Liebchen, and Peter Schmelcher
Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 034101 – Published 22 January 2014

Abstract

We explore the impact of weak disorder on the dynamics of classical particles in a periodically oscillating lattice. It is demonstrated that the disorder induces a hopping process from diffusive to regular motion; i.e., we observe the counterintuitive phenomenon that disorder leads to regular behavior. If the disorder is localized in a finite-sized part of the lattice, the described hopping causes initially diffusive particles to even accumulate in regular structures of the corresponding phase space. A hallmark of this accumulation is the emergence of pronounced peaks in the velocity distribution of particles that should be detectable in state of the art experiments, e.g., with cold atoms in optical lattices.

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  • Received 27 August 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.034101

© 2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Thomas Wulf1,*, Benno Liebchen1, and Peter Schmelcher1,2,†

  • 1Zentrum für Optische Quantentechnologien, Universität Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg, Germany
  • 2The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging, Universität Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761 Hamburg, Germany

  • *Thomas.Wulf@physnet.uni-hamburg.de
  • Peter.Schmelcher@physnet.uni-hamburg.de

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Issue

Vol. 112, Iss. 3 — 24 January 2014

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