Three-dimensional localization of ultracold atoms in an optical disordered potential
By F. Jendrzejewski, A. Bernard, K. Mueller, P. Cheinet, V. Josse, M. Piraud, Luca Pezzè, Laurent Sanchez-Palencia, A. Aspect, P. Bouyer. Nature Physics, 2011
363 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In disordered media, quantum interference effects are expected to induce complete suppression of electron conduction. The phenomenon, known as Anderson localization, has a counterpart with classical waves that has been observed in acoustics, electromagnetism and optics, but a direct observation for particles remains elusive. Here, we report the observation of the three-dimensional localization of ultracold atoms in a disordered potential created by a speckle laser field. A phenomenological analysis of our data distinguishes a localized component of the resulting density profile from a diffusive component. The observed localization cannot be interpreted as the classical trapping of particles with energy below the classical percolation threshold in the disorder, nor can it be understood as quantum trapping in local potential minima. Instead, our data are compatible with the self-consistent theory of Anderson localization tailored to our system, involving a heuristic energy shift that offers scope for future interpretation. An experimental study of three-dimensional localization of ultracold atoms in controlled disorder provides evidence for behaviour that is consistent with Anderson localization, but incompatible with classical trapping.
Subfields: Acoustics and Ultrasonics, Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9288229f7522aec5e37dcc629c53a1560fcae438
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Citations in the corpus
- Measurement of the mobility edge for 3D Anderson localization (2014, background): “periments [13, 14], while demonstrating the occurrence of an Anderson transition, could not precisely locate the mobility edge because of the difficulty in controlling the system energy.”
- Direct determination of the transition to localization of light in three dimensions (2012, neutral): “We identified s(2)1 = j(2) and obtained jR1041⁄4 717(6) mm for R104, jR9021⁄4 717(9) mm for R902 and jR7001⁄4 670(9) mm for R700.”
- Strongly correlated quantum fluids: ultracold quantum gases, quantum chromodynamic plasmas and holographic duality (2012, background): “Although these explorations have not treated lattice physics particularly, nevertheless disorder is an essential feature of lattice systems arising in nature, and can be induced artificially in various ways for optical lattices [424].”