Bloch oscillations collapse and revival of interacting bosons in an optical lattice

Published

February 10, 2014

Author(s)

Khan W. Mahmud, Lei Jiang, Eite Tiesinga, Philip Johnson

Abstract

We study the dynamics of interacting superfluid bosons in a one dimensional vertical optical lattice after a sudden increase of the lattice potential depth. We show that this system can be exploited to investigate the effects of strong interactions on Bloch oscillations. We perform theoretical modelling of this system, identify experimental challenges and explore a new regime of Bloch oscillations characterized by interaction-induced matter-wave collapse and revivals which modify the Bloch oscillations dynamics. In addition, we study three dephasing mechanisms: effective three-body interactions, finite value of tunneling, and a background harmonic potential. We also find that the center of mass motion in the presence of finite tunneling goes through collapse and revivals, giving an example of quantum transport where interaction-induced revivals are important. We quantify the effects of residual harmonic trapping on the momentum distribution dynamics and show the effects of interactions on thetemporal Talbot effect. Finally, we analyze the prospects and challenges of exploiting Bloch oscillations of cold atoms in the strongly- interacting regime for precision measurement of the gravitational acceleration g

Citation

Physical Review A

Volume

89

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.023606

Keywords

Ultracold atom dynamics, Bloch oscillations, Measurement of gravity

Citation

Mahmud, K. , Jiang, L. , Tiesinga, E. and Johnson, P. (2014), Bloch oscillations collapse and revival of interacting bosons in an optical lattice, Physical Review A, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.023606 (Accessed October 9, 2025)