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arXiv:1011.2362 · Physical Review Letters

Observation of Subdiffusion in a Disordered Interacting System

E. Lucioni, Benjamin Deissler, Luca Tanzi, G. Roati, Matteo Zaccanti, Michele Modugno, Marco Larcher, F. Dalfovo, M. Inguscio, Giovanni Carlo Modugno

Published Jun 8, 2011• 169 citations
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Abstract

We study the transport dynamics of matter-waves in the presence of disorder and nonlinearity. An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate that is localized in a quasiperiodic lattice in the absence of atom-atom interaction shows instead a slow expansion with a subdiffusive behavior when a controlled repulsive interaction is added. The measured features of the subdiffusion are compared to numerical simulations and a heuristic model. The observations confirm the nature of subdiffusion as interaction-assisted hopping between localized states and highlight a role of the spatial correlation of the disorder.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.106.230403

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We study the transport dynamics of matter-waves in the presence of disorder and nonlinearity. An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate that is localized in a quasiperiodic lattice in the absence of atom-atom interaction shows instead a slow expansion with a subdiffusive behavior when a controlled repulsive interaction is added. The measured features of the subdiffusion are compared to numerical simulations and a heuristic model. The observations confirm the nature of subdiffusion as interaction-assisted hopping between localized states and highlight a role of the spatial correlation of the disorder.
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We use ultracold atoms in a quasiperiodic lattice to study two outstanding problems in the physics of disordered systems: a) the anomalous diffusion of a wavepacket in the presence of disorder, interactions and noise; b) the transport of a disordered superfluid.a) Our results show that the subdiffusion, observed when interaction alone is present, can be modelled with a nonlinear diffusion equation and the peculiar shape of the expanding density profiles can be connected to the microscopic nonlinear diffusion coefficients.Also when noise alone is present we can describe the observed normal diffusion dynamics by existing microscopic models.In the unexplored regime in which noise and interaction are combined, instead, we observe an anomalous diffusion, that we model with a generalized diffusion equation, where noise-and interaction-induced contributions add each other.b) We find that an instability appearing at relatively large momenta can be employed to locate the fluid-insulator crossover driven by disorder.By investigating the momentum-dependent transport, we observe a sharp crossover from a weakly dissipative regime to a strongly unstable one at a disorder-dependent critical momentum.The set of critical disorder and interaction strengths for which such critical momentum vanishes, can be identified with the separation between a fluid regime and an insulating one and can be related to the predicted zero-temperature superfluid-Bose glass transition.
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We study the effect of atomic interaction on the localization and the associated dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional quasiperiodic optical lattice and random disordered potentials. When the interactions are absent, the condensates exhibit localization, which weakens as we increase the interaction strength beyond a threshold value for both potential types. We inspect the localized and delocalized states by perturbing the system via quenching the interaction strength instantaneously to zero and studying the dynamics of the condensate, which we further corroborate using the out-of-time-order correlator. The temporal behavior of the time correlator displays regular dynamics for the localized state, while it shows temporal chaos for the delocalized state. We confirm this dynamical behavior by analyzing the power spectral density of the time correlator. We further identify that the condensate admits a quasiperiodic route to chaotic dynamics for both the potentials. Finally, we present the variation of the maximal Lyapunov exponents for different nonlinearity and disorder strengths that have a positive value in the regime where the time-correlator function shows chaotic behavior. Through this, we establish the strong connection between the spatially delocalized state of the condensate and its temporal chaos.
Expansion of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is studied in the presence of a random potential. The expansion is controlled by a single parameter, (microtau(eff)/variant Planck's over 2pi), where micro is the chemical potential, prior to the release of the BEC from the trap, and tau(eff) is a transport relaxation time which characterizes the strength of the disorder. Repulsive interactions (nonlinearity) facilitate transport and can lead to diffusive spreading of the condensate which, in the absence of interactions, would have remained localized in the vicinity of its initial location.