Single-Particle Tunneling in Strongly Driven Double-Well Potentials

Abstract

We report on the first direct observation of coherent control of single-particle tunneling in a strongly driven double-well potential. In our setup atoms propagate in a periodic arrangement of double wells allowing the full control of the driving parameters such as frequency, amplitude, and even the space-time symmetry. Our experimental findings are in quantitative agreement with the predictions of the corresponding Floquet theory and are also compared to the predictions of a simple two mode model. Our experiments reveal directly the critical dependence of coherent destruction of tunneling on the generalized parity symmetry.

Density-Dependent Synthetic Gauge Fields Using Periodically Modulated Interactions

“…Schemes have been recently proposed for multicomponent lattice gases, such that the low-energy description of these systems is that of relevant quantum field theories [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. The backaction of the atoms on the value of a synthetic gauge field is expected to lead to interesting physics, including statistically induced phase transitions and anyons in 1D lattices [32], and chiral solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates [33].Periodically modulated optical lattices open interesting possibilities for the engineering of lattice gases [16][17][18][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. In particular, periodic lattice shaking results in a modified hopping rate [34][35][36], which has been employed to drive the superfluid (SF) to Mott insulator (MI) transition [37], to simulate frustrated classical magnetism [38], and to create tunable gauge potentials [16].…”

Particle-hole symmetric localization in optical lattices using time modulated random on-site potentials

“…This is the so-called dynamical localization phenomenon, and it has been observed in experiments. 27,28,33 It has also been proposed as a method to tune interacting bosons through the superfluid-insulator transition, 21,23 to observe the analog of photon assisted tunneling and Shapiro steps, 16,22 and to manipulate the localization properties of Anderson insulators. 17,24 Recent experimental work has confirmed some of these proposals.…”

Photon-assisted tunneling in optical lattices: Ballistic transport of interacting boson pairs

“…The experimental realization [2,12,13] of destruction of tunneling via time-periodic potential differences [5] was the breakthrough for tunneling control via timeperiodic potential differences. The systems used so far in experiments are as divers as BECs in an optical lattice [2], single particles in a double well [12] and light in a double-well system [13].…”

“…The systems used so far in experiments are as divers as BECs in an optical lattice [2], single particles in a double well [12] and light in a double-well system [13].…”