Bloch Oscillations and Mean-Field Effects of Bose-Einstein Condensates in 1D Optical Lattices
O. MorschINFM, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Via Buonarroti 2, I-56127 Pisa, ItalyJ. H. MüllerINFM, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Via Buonarroti 2, I-56127 Pisa, ItalyMatteo CristianiINFM, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Via Buonarroti 2, I-56127 Pisa, ItalyD. CiampiniINFM, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Via Buonarroti 2, I-56127 Pisa, ItalyE. ArimondoINFM, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Via Buonarroti 2, I-56127 Pisa, Italy
2001en
ABI
Abstract
We have loaded Bose-Einstein condensates into one-dimensional, off-resonant optical lattices and accelerated them by chirping the frequency difference between the two lattice beams. For small values of the lattice well depth, Bloch oscillations were observed. Reducing the potential depth further, Landau-Zener tunneling out of the lowest lattice band, leading to a breakdown of the oscillations, was also studied and used as a probe for the effective potential resulting from mean-field interactions as predicted by Choi and Niu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2022 (1999)]. The effective potential was measured for various condensate densities and trap geometries, yielding good qualitative agreement with theoretical calculations.
Identifiers
Citations and references
Cited by 20 references