Several recent studies have investigated the dynamics of cold atoms in optical lattices subject to AC forcing; the theoretically predicted renormalization of the tunneling amplitudes has been verified experimentally. Recent observations include global motion of the atom cloud, such as giant "Super-Bloch Oscillations" (SBOs). We show that, in order to understand unexplained features of SBOs, in addition to the renormalization of the tunneling, a new and important phase correction must be included. For Fermionic systems with strong attractive interactions, one may engineer different types of collisions and recollisions between bound-pairs and unpaired atoms.
We numerically investigate the damping of Bloch oscillations in a one-dimensional lattice potential whose translational symmetry is broken in a systematic manner, either by making the potential bichromatic or by introducing scatterers at distinct lattice sites. We find that the damping strongly depends on the ratio of lattice constants in the bichromatic potential, and that even a small concentration of scatterers can lead to strong damping. Moreover, mean-field interactions are able to counteract aperiodicity-induced damping of Bloch oscillations.
We study super Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in a shaken lattice potential, subjected to a harmonically modulated mean-field interaction. Usually, any interaction leads to the decay of the wave packet and its super Bloch oscillation. Here, we use the phases of interaction and shaking with respect to the free Bloch oscillation as control parameters. We find two types of long-living cases: (i) suppression of the immediate broadening of the wave packet, and (ii) dynamical stability of all degrees of freedom. The latter relies on the rather robust symmetry argument of cyclic time [Gaul et …
Particles in a perfect lattice potential perform Bloch oscillations when subject to a constant force, leading to localization and preventing conductivity. For a weakly-interacting Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of Cs atoms, we observe giant center-of-mass oscillations in position space with a displacement across hundreds of lattice sites when we add a periodic modulation to the force near the Bloch frequency. We study the dependence of these "super" Bloch oscillations on lattice depth, modulation amplitude, and modulation frequency and show that they provide a means to induce linear transport …
We present a new technique for stabilizing and monitoring Bloch oscillations of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice under the action of a constant external force. In the proposed scheme, the atoms also interact with a unidirectionally pumped optical ring cavity whose one arm is collinear with the optical lattice. For weak collective coupling, Bloch oscillations dominate over the collective atomic recoil lasing instability and develop a synchronized regime in which the atoms periodically exchange momentum with the cavity field.
We study atomic Bloch oscillations in an ensemble of one-dimensional tilted superfluids in the Bose-Hubbard regime. For large values of the tilt, we observe interaction-induced coherent decay and matter-wave quantum phase revivals of the Bloch oscillating ensemble. We analyze the revival period dependence on interactions by means of a Feshbach resonance. When reducing the value of the tilt, we observe the disappearance of the quasi-periodic phase revival signature towards an irreversible decay of Bloch oscillations, indicating the transition from regular to quantum chaotic dynamics.
We consider Bloch oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates in presence of a time-modulated s-wave scattering length. Generically, interaction leads to dephasing and decay of the wave packet. Based on a cyclic-time argument, we find---additionally to the linear Bloch oscillation and a rigid soliton solution---an infinite family of modulations that lead to a periodic time evolution of the wave packet. In order to quantitatively describe the dynamics of Bloch oscillations in presence of time-modulated interactions, we employ two complementary methods: collective-coordinates and the linear stabil…
We report on experiments investigating quantum transport and band interferometry of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice with a two-band miniband structure, realized with a Fourier-synthesized optical lattice potential. Bloch-Zener oscillations, the coherent superposition of Bloch oscillations and Landau-Zener tunneling between the two bands are observed. When the relative phase between paths in different bands is varied, an interference signal is observed, demonstrating the coherence of the dynamics in the miniband system. Measured fringe patterns of this Stückelberg inter…
We analyze the dynamics of an initially trapped cloud of interacting quantum particles on a lattice under a linear (Stark) potential. We reveal a dichotomy: initially trapped interacting systems possess features typical of both many-body-localized and self-thermalizing systems. We consider both fermions ($t$-$V$ model) and bosons (Bose-Hubbard model). For the zero and infinite interaction limits, both systems are integrable: we provide analytic solutions in terms of the moments of the initial cloud shape, and clarify how the recurrent dynamics (many-body Bloch oscillations) depends on the init…
We study the magnetic Bloch oscillations performed by a quantum particle moving in a two-dimensional lattice in the presence of a strong (synthetic) magnetic field and a uniform force. An elementary derivation of the Berry curvature effect on the semiclassical trajectory is given as well as an explicit connection to the classical Hall effect in the continuum limit. Perspectives to observe these effects in optical systems using synthetic gauge fields for photons are discussed.
We investigate Bloch-Zener oscillations and mean-field Bloch bands of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a Lieb optical lattice. We find that the atomic interaction will break the point group symmetry of the system, leading to the destruction of the Dirac cone structure, while the flat band is preserved on the highly symmetric lines. Due to the nonlinear effect, a tubular band structure with a flat band will appear in the system. Furthermore, comparing with that the tight-binding (TB) model fails to describe the interacting bosonic systems in the honeycomb lattice, we show that the TB model i…
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 interaction…
Super-Bloch oscillations are the outcome of a relative phase between Bloch oscillations and modulations of the periodic lattice. We analyze the dynamics for a model system in which such a relative phase is intrinsically present due to the position-dependent force provided by a parabolic trap and therefore an external detuning is not required. The relative phase is not unique and the realized dynamics depends on the initial phase of the modulated parabolic potential. We provide accurate explanations for the different obtained oscillatory transport and spreading regimes by analyzing the spatio-t…
We study dynamics of a mobile impurity moving in a one-dimensional quantum liquid. Such an impurity induces a strong non-linear depletion of the liquid around it. The dispersion relation of the combined object, called depleton, is a periodic function of its momentum with the period 2πn, where n is the mean density of the liquid. In the adiabatic approximation a constant external force acting on the impurity leads to the Bloch oscillations of the impurity around a fixed position. Dynamically such oscillations are accompanied by the radiation of energy in the form of phonons. The ensuing energy …
We study Rabi oscillations between the bands of an arbitrary biased superlattice in a tight-binding model. We reduce the problem to an equation of Whittaker--Hill type and, in absence of any known solutions in closed form, discuss different approximations to describe the oscillations between the Bloch bands. We identify regimes of weak and strong inter-band coupling and compare predictions for these Rabi oscillations to numerical results.
We study the Bloch oscillation dynamics of a spin-orbit-coupled cold atomic gas trapped inside a one-dimensioanl optical lattice. The eigenspectra of the system is identified as two interpenetrating Wannier-Stark ladder. Based on that, we carefully analyzed the Bloch oscillation dynamics and found out that intraladder coupling between neighboring rungs of Wannier-Stark ladder give rise to ordinary Bloch oscillation while interladder coupling lead to small amplitude high frequency oscillation superimposed on it. Specifically spin-orbit interaction breaks Galilean invariance, which can be reflec…
We identify a new type of periodic evolution that appears in driven quantum systems. Provided that the instantaneous (adiabatic) energies are equidistant we show how such systems can be mapped to (time-dependent) tilted single-band lattice models. Having established this mapping, the dynamics can be understood in terms of Bloch oscillations in the instantaneous energy basis. In our lattice model the site-localized states are the adiabatic ones, and the Bloch oscillations manifest as a periodic repopulation among these states, or equivalently a periodic change in the system's instantaneous ener…
We propose to use Bloch oscillation of ultra-cold atoms in a spin-dependent optical lattice to prepare schrodinger cat states. Depending on its internal state, an atom feels different periodic potentials and thus has different energy band structures for its center-of-mass motion. Consequently, under the same gravity force, the wave packets associated with different internal states perform Bloch oscillation of different amplitudes in space and in particular they can be macroscopically displaced with respect to each other. In this way, a cat state can be prepared.
We report the direct observation and characterization of position-space Bloch oscillations using an ultracold gas in a tilted optical lattice. While Bloch oscillations in momentum space are a common feature of optical lattice experiments, the real-space center-of-mass dynamics are typically too small to resolve. Tuning into the regime of rapid tunneling and weak force, we observe real-space Bloch oscillation amplitudes of hundreds of lattice sites, in both ground and excited bands. We demonstrate two unique capabilities enabled by tracking of Bloch dynamics in position space: measurement of th…
Bloch oscillations are a powerful tool to investigate spectra with Dirac points. By varying band parameters, Dirac points can be manipulated and merged at a topological transition towards a gapped phase. Under a constant force, a Fermi sea initially in the lower band performs Bloch oscillations and may Zener tunnel to the upper band mostly at the location of the Dirac points. The tunneling probability is computed from the low energy universal Hamiltonian describing the vicinity of the merging. The agreement with a recent experiment on cold atoms in an optical lattice is very good.
We discuss the method for the measurement of the gravity acceleration g by means of Bloch oscillations of an accelerated BEC in an optical lattice. This method has a theoretical critical point due to the fact that the period of the Bloch oscillations depends, in principle, on the initial shape of the BEC wavepacket. Here, by making use of the nearest-neighbor model for the numerical analysis of the BEC wavefunction, we show that in real experiments the period of the Bloch oscillations does not really depend on the shape of the initial wavepacket and that the relative uncertainty, due to the fa…
The standard Bloch oscillation normally refers to the oscillatory tunneling dynamics of quantum particles in a periodic lattice plus a linear gradient. In this work we theoretically investigate the generalized form of the Bloch oscillation in the presence of additional higher order gradients, and demonstrate that the higher order gradients can significantly modify the tunneling dynamics, particularly in the spectrum of the density oscillation. The spectrum of the standard Bloch oscillation is composed of a single prime frequency and its higher harmonics, while the higher-order gradients in the…
Bloch oscillations are a hallmark of coherent wave dynamics in periodic potentials. They occur as the response of quantum mechanical particles in a lattice if a weak force is applied. In optical lattices with their perfect periodic structure they can be readily observed and employed as a quantum mechanical force sensor, for example, for precise measurements of the gravitational acceleration. However, the destructive character of the measurement process in previous experimental implementations poses serious limitations for the precision of such measurements. In this article we show that the use…
We show that the motion of an accelerated atomic impurity immersed in a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate in the supersolid stripe phase undergoes oscillations, similar to the well-known phenomenon of Bloch oscillations in solids. While the back-action of the oscillatory movement onto the condensate excites phonon modes inside the supersolid, it does not affect the position of the roton minimum and therefore not the periodicity of the matter wave lattice. The ultimate decay of the oscillations is mostly due to the dispersion of the wavepacket and we show that this can be counteracted…
Recent experimental progress in the creation of synthetic electric and magnetic fields, acting on cold atoms in a two-dimensional lattice, has attracted renewed interest to the problem of a quantum particle in the Hall configuration. The present work contains a detailed analysis of the eigenstates of this system, called Landau-Stark states, and of the associated dynamical phenomenon of cyclotron-Bloch oscillations. It is shown that Landau-Stark states and cyclotron-Bloch oscillations crucially depend on two factors. The first is the orientation of the electric field relative to the primary axe…
We investigate the interaction-induced superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition in the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model (BHM) for fillings $n=1$, $n=2$, and $n=3$ by studying the single-particle gap, the fidelity susceptibility, and the amplitude of Bloch oscillations via density-matrix renormalization-group methods. We apply a generic scaling procedure for the gap, which allows us to determine the critical points with very high accuracy. We also study how the fidelity susceptibility behaves across the phase transition. Furthermore, we show that in the BHM, and in a system of spinless fermion…
Cold atoms in an optical lattice execute Bloch-Zener oscillations when they are accelerated. We have performed a theoretical investigation into the case when the optical lattice is the intra-cavity field of a driven Fabry-Perot resonator. When the atoms oscillate inside the resonator, we find that their back-action modulates the phase and intensity of the light transmitted through the cavity. We solve the coupled atom-light equations self-consistently and show that, remarkably, the Bloch period is unaffected by this back-action. The transmitted light provides a way to observe the oscillation c…
We point out that in higher dimensions, in contrast to the one dimensional case considered usually, Bloch oscillation driven by a static force can induce transport of the wave packet. The wave packet oscillates constantly, but on a larger time scale it drifts at a constant velocity permanently. As a noteworthy feature, the net transport in the long run is always normal to the external force and thus controlled by it. We verify this prediction numerically and discuss its experimental realization both with cold atoms in optical lattices and with two dimensional photonic lattices.
Variational solutions of the Boltzmann equation usually rely on the concept of linear response. We extend the variational approach for tight-binding models at high entropies to a regime far beyond linear response. We analyze both weakly interacting fermions and incoherent bosons on a lattice. We consider a case where the particles are driven by a constant force, leading to the well-known Bloch oscillations, and we consider interactions that are weak enough not to overdamp these oscillations. This regime is computationally demanding and relevant for ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We deriv…
Adiabatic quantum pumping in one-dimensional lattices is extended by adding a tilted potential to probe better topologically nontrivial bands. This extension leads to almost perfectly quantized pumping for an arbitrary initial state selected in a band of interest, including Bloch states. In this approach, the time variable offers not only a synthetic dimension as in the case of the Thouless pumping, but it assists also in the uniform sampling of all momenta due to the Bloch oscillations induced by the tilt. The quantized drift of Bloch oscillations is determined by a one-dimensional time integ…
We address Bloch oscillations of a spin-orbit coupled atom in periodic potentials of two types: Optical and Zeeman lattices. We show that in optical lattices the spin-orbit coupling allows controlling the direction of atomic motion and may lead to complete suppression of the oscillations at specific values of the coupling strength. In Zeeman lattices the energy bands are found to cross each other at the boundaries of the Brillouin zone, resulting in period-doubling of the oscillations. In all cases, the oscillations are accompanied by rotation of the pseudo-spin, with a dynamics that is determ…
We propose to measure band topology via quantized drift of Bloch oscillations in a two-dimensional Harper-Hofstadter lattice subjected to tilted fields in both directions. When the difference between the two tilted fields is large, Bloch oscillations uniformly sample all momenta, and hence the displacement in each direction tends to be quantized at multiples of the overall period, regardless of any momentum of initial state. The quantized displacement is related to a reduced Chern number defined as a line integral of Berry curvature in each direction, providing an almost perfect measurement of…
We investigate the dynamics of a wave packet in a parity-breaking one-dimensional periodic potential slowly varied in time and perturbed by a linear potential. Parity is broken by considering an asymmetric double well per unit cell. By comparing the prediction of the semiclassical dynamics with the full Schrödinger solution, we show that Bloch oscillations are strongly affected by anomalous velocity corrections related to Berry's phase. We characterize how these effects depend on the degree of parity breaking of the potential and on the modulation parameters. We also discuss how to measure the…
The engineering of synthetic dimensions allows for the construction of fictitious lattice structures by coupling the discrete degrees of freedom of a physical system, such as the quantized modes of an electromagnetic cavity or the internal states of an atom. This method enables the study of static and dynamical Bloch band properties in the absence of a real periodic lattice structure. So far, the vast majority of implementations have focused on linear and conservative processes, with the potentially rich physics and opportunities offered by nonlinearities and dissipation remaining largely unex…
