English

Anisotropic 2D diffusive expansion of ultra-cold atoms in a disordered potential

Quantum Gases 2010-11-01 v1 Disordered Systems and Neural Networks Atomic Physics

Abstract

We study the horizontal expansion of vertically confined ultra-cold atoms in the presence of disorder. Vertical confinement allows us to realize a situation with a few coupled harmonic oscillator quantum states. The disordered potential is created by an optical speckle at an angle of 30{\deg} with respect to the horizontal plane, resulting in an effective anisotropy of the correlation lengths of a factor of 2 in that plane. We observe diffusion leading to non-Gaussian density profiles. Diffusion coefficients, extracted from the experimental results, show anisotropy and strong energy dependence, in agreement with numerical calculations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1004.0312,
  title  = {Anisotropic 2D diffusive expansion of ultra-cold atoms in a disordered potential},
  author = {M. Robert-de-Saint-Vincent and J. -P. Brantut and B. Allard and T. Plisson and L. Pezzé and L. Sanchez-Palencia and A. Aspect and T. Bourdel and P. Bouyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1004.0312},
  year   = {2010}
}