Damped Bloch Oscillations of Bose-Einstein Condensates in Disordered Potential Gradients
Abstract
We investigate both experimentally and theoretically disorder induced damping of Bloch oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices. The spatially inhomogeneous force responsible for the damping is realised by a combination of a disordered optical and a magnetic gradient potential. We show that the inhomogeneity of this force results in a broadening of the quasimomentum spectrum, which in turn causes damping of the centre-of-mass oscillation. We quantitatively compare the obtained damping rates to the simulations using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our results are relevant for high precision experiments on very small forces, which require the observation of a large number of oscillation cycles.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.3437,
title = {Damped Bloch Oscillations of Bose-Einstein Condensates in Disordered Potential Gradients},
author = {S. Drenkelforth and G. Kleine Büning and J. Will and T. Schulte and N. Murray and W. Ertmer and L. Santos and J. J. Arlt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.3437},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
to be published in New Journal of Physics