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arXiv:cond-mat/0202053 · Physical Review A

Experimental properties of Bose-Einstein condensates in one-dimensional optical lattices: Bloch oscillations, Landau-Zener tunneling, and mean-field effects

Matteo Cristiani, O. Morsch, Jörg Helge Müller, D. Ciampini, E. Arimondo

Published Jun 13, 2002• 208 citations
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Abstract

We report experimental results on the properties of Bose-Einstein condensates in one-dimensional optical lattices. By accelerating the lattice, we observed Bloch oscillations of the condensate in the lowest band, as well as Landau-Zener (LZ) tunneling into higher bands when the lattice depth was reduced and/or the acceleration of the lattice was increased. The dependence of the LZ tunneling rate on the condensate density was then related to mean-field effects modifying the effective potential acting on the condensate, yielding good agreement with recent theoretical work. We also present several methods for measuring the lattice depth and discuss the effects of the micromotion in the time-orbiting-potential trap on our experimental results.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.063612

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We report experimental results on the properties of Bose-Einstein condensates in one-dimensional optical lattices. By accelerating the lattice, we observed Bloch oscillations of the condensate in the lowest band, as well as Landau-Zener (LZ) tunneling into higher bands when the lattice depth was reduced and/or the acceleration of the lattice was increased. The dependence of the LZ tunneling rate on the condensate density was then related to mean-field effects modifying the effective potential acting on the condensate, yielding good agreement with recent theoretical work. We also present several methods for measuring the lattice depth and discuss the effects of the micromotion in the time-orbiting-potential trap on our experimental results.
We have loaded Bose-Einstein condensates into one-dimensional, off-resonant optical lattices and accelerated them by chirping the frequency difference between the two lattice beams. For small values of the lattice well depth, Bloch oscillations were observed. Reducing the potential depth further, Landau-Zener tunneling out of the lowest lattice band, leading to a breakdown of the oscillations, was also studied and used as a probe for the effective potential resulting from mean-field interactions as predicted by Choi and Niu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2022 (1999)]. The effective potential was measured for various condensate densities and trap geometries, yielding good qualitative agreement with theoretical calculations.
We have loaded Bose-Einstein condensates into one-dimensional, off-resonant optical lattices and accelerated them by chirping the frequency difference between the two lattice beams. For small values of the lattice well-depth, Bloch oscillations were observed. Landau-Zener tunneling out of the lowest lattice band, leading to a breakdown of the oscillations, was also studied. In order to allow in-trap measurements of these phenomena, we dynamically compensated for the intrinsic micromotion of the atoms in our time-orbiting potential trap.
With considering Bose-Einstein condensates to be confined in a periodic dichromatic optical lattice, Bloch energy band structure and Landau-Zener tunneling behaviors of the first and second band gaps are studied in this paper. It is shown that when the relative phase between the two lattices increases from 0 to π, the width of the first band gap in the Bloch energy band increases, while the width of the second band gap decreases. Meanwhile, it is found that the depth and the relative phase between the two lattices have both an important effect on Landau-Zener tunneling properties.
In BECs, collisions between condensate atoms give rise to a nonlinear contribution to the dynamics which is typically included as a mean-field term in the Schrodinger equation. This nonlinearity leads to a modification of well-known effects associated with matter waves in periodic potentials and adds a number of phenomena that are absent in the linear problem. We focused on the dynamics of a BEC in an accelerated optical lattice. In the linear case, this gives rise to Bloch oscillations and, above a critical acceleration, to Landau-Zener tunneling. In the nonlinear case, the probability for Landau-Zener tunneling is modified depending on the direction in which it occurs between two bands. By varying the acceleration of the optical lattice and measuring the time-dependence of the interference contrast, we were able to identify the instability regime and the characteristic time in which the dynamical instability destroys the interference pattern. Furthermore, we observed an increase in the condensate dimensions perpendicular to the lattice direction when the unstable region was reached. This indicates a mechanism whereby the longitudinal instability leads to an increase in the transverse release energy