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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...

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Autores principales: An, Fangzhao Alex, Meier, Eric J., Gadway, Bryce
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
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.
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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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