arXiv:1105.4629 · Physical Review Letters
Photon-Assisted Tunneling in a Biased Strongly Correlated Bose Gas
Ruichao Ma, M. Eric Tai, Philipp M. Preiss, Waseem Bakr, Jonathan Simon, Markus Greiner
Abstract
We study the impact of coherently generated lattice photons on an atomic Mott insulator subjected to a uniform force. Analogous to an array of tunnel-coupled and biased quantum dots, we observe sharp, interaction-shifted photon-assisted tunneling resonances corresponding to tunneling one and two lattice sites either with or against the force and resolve multiorbital shifts of these resonances. By driving a Landau-Zener sweep across such a resonance, we realize a quantum phase transition between a paramagnet and an antiferromagnet and observe quench dynamics when the system is tuned to the critical point. Direct extensions will produce gauge fields and site-resolved spin flips, for topological physics and quantum computing.