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Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices offer a unique platform for investigating disorder-driven phenomena. While static disordered site potentials have been explored in a number of experiments, a more general, dynamical control over site-energy and off-diagonal tunnelling disorder has been lacking. Th...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5569022/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28835606 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00387-w |
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author | An, Fangzhao Alex Meier, Eric J. Gadway, Bryce |
author_facet | An, Fangzhao Alex Meier, Eric J. Gadway, Bryce |
author_sort | An, Fangzhao Alex |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ultracold atoms in optical lattices offer a unique platform for investigating disorder-driven phenomena. While static disordered site potentials have been explored in a number of experiments, a more general, dynamical control over site-energy and off-diagonal tunnelling disorder has been lacking. The use of atomic quantum states as synthetic dimensions has introduced the spectroscopic, site-resolved control necessary to engineer more tailored realisations of disorder. Here, we present explorations of dynamical and tunneling disorder in an atomic system by controlling laser-driven dynamics of atomic population in a momentum-space lattice. By applying static tunnelling phase disorder to a one-dimensional lattice, we observe ballistic quantum spreading. When the applied disorder fluctuates on time scales comparable to intersite tunnelling, we instead observe diffusive atomic transport, signalling a crossover from quantum to classical expansion dynamics. We compare these observations to the case of static site-energy disorder, where we directly observe quantum localisation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5569022 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55690222017-08-30 Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder An, Fangzhao Alex Meier, Eric J. Gadway, Bryce Nat Commun Article Ultracold atoms in optical lattices offer a unique platform for investigating disorder-driven phenomena. While static disordered site potentials have been explored in a number of experiments, a more general, dynamical control over site-energy and off-diagonal tunnelling disorder has been lacking. The use of atomic quantum states as synthetic dimensions has introduced the spectroscopic, site-resolved control necessary to engineer more tailored realisations of disorder. Here, we present explorations of dynamical and tunneling disorder in an atomic system by controlling laser-driven dynamics of atomic population in a momentum-space lattice. By applying static tunnelling phase disorder to a one-dimensional lattice, we observe ballistic quantum spreading. When the applied disorder fluctuates on time scales comparable to intersite tunnelling, we instead observe diffusive atomic transport, signalling a crossover from quantum to classical expansion dynamics. We compare these observations to the case of static site-energy disorder, where we directly observe quantum localisation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5569022/ /pubmed/28835606 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00387-w Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article An, Fangzhao Alex Meier, Eric J. Gadway, Bryce Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title | Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title_full | Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title_fullStr | Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title_full_unstemmed | Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title_short | Diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
title_sort | diffusive and arrested transport of atoms under tailored disorder |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5569022/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28835606 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00387-w |
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