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arXiv:0709.3137 · Physical Review Letters

Observation of Photon-Assisted Tunneling in Optical Lattices

Carlo Sias, Hans Lignier, Yeshpal Singh, Alessandro Zenesini, D. Ciampini, O. Morsch, E. Arimondo

Published Feb 1, 2008• 240 citations
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Abstract

We have observed tunneling suppression and photon-assisted tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice subjected to a constant force plus a sinusoidal shaking. For a sufficiently large constant force, the ground energy levels of the lattice are shifted out of resonance and tunneling is suppressed; when the shaking is switched on, the levels are coupled by low-frequency photons and tunneling resumes. Our results agree well with theoretical predictions and demonstrate the usefulness of optical lattices for studying solid-state phenomena.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.100.040404

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We have observed tunneling suppression and photon-assisted tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical lattice subjected to a constant force plus a sinusoidal shaking. For a sufficiently large constant force, the ground energy levels of the lattice are shifted out of resonance and tunneling is suppressed; when the shaking is switched on, the levels are coupled by low-frequency photons and tunneling resumes. Our results agree well with theoretical predictions and demonstrate the usefulness of optical lattices for studying solid-state phenomena.
In a recent experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 040404 (2008)], an analog of photon-assisted tunneling was observed for a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice subject to a constant force plus a sinusoidal shaking. Contrary to previous theoretical predictions, the width of the condensate was measured to be proportional to the square of the effective tunneling matrix element, rather than a linear dependence. For a simple model of two interacting bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice, both analytical and numerical calculations indicate that such a transition from a linear to a quadratic dependence can be interpreted through the ballistic transport and the corresponding exact dispersion relation of bound boson pairs.
We investigate the quantum tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices under gravity in the "Wannier-Stark localization" regime and "Landau-Zener tunneling" regime. Our results agree with experimental data [B. P. Anderson et al., Science 282, 1686 (1998); F. S. Cataliotti et al., Science 293, 843 (2001)]. We obtain the total decay rate which is valid over the entire range of temperatures, and show how it reduces to the appropriate results for the classical thermal activation at high temperatures, the thermally assisted tunneling at intermediate temperatures, and the pure quantum tunneling at low temperatures. We design an experimental protocol to observe this new phenomenon in further experiments.
Fractional-photon-assisted tunneling is investigated both analytically and numerically for few interacting ultracold atoms in the double wells of an optical superlattice. This can be realized experimentally by adding periodic shaking to an existing experimental setup [Cheinet et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 090404 (2008)]. Photon-assisted tunneling is visible in the particle transfer between the wells of the individual double wells. In order to understand the physics of the photon-assisted tunneling, an effective model based on the rotating-wave approximation is introduced. The validity of this effective approach is tested for wide parameter ranges that are accessible to experiments in double-well lattices. The effective model goes well beyond previous perturbation theory approaches and is useful for investigating in particular the fractional-photon-assisted tunneling resonances. Analytic results on the level of the experimentally realizable two-particle quantum dynamics show very good agreement with the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. Far from being a small effect, both the one-half-photon and the one-third-photon resonances are shown to have large effects on the particle transfer.
We investigate the photon-assisted tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a periodically driven double-well potential. It is shown that the energy levels become nonequidistant due to the presence of the interatomic interaction, thereby leading to the occurrences of the fractional photon resonances. Depending on whether the resonance frequency shifts with the interatomic interaction, two distinct types of resonances are identified: nonshifting resonances and shifting resonances. In particular, certain nonshifting fractional resonances show an odd-even sensitivity to the atom number.