Osnabrück 2002 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 311: Bose-Einstein Kondensation I

Q 311.4: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 6. März 2002, 14:45–15:00, HS 22/B01

Experiments on Superfluidity and the Josephson Effect with Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices — •Sven Burger, Francesco Saverio Cataliotti, Chiara Fort, Pasquale Maddaloni, Francesca Ferlaino, Francesco Minardi, and Massimo Inguscio — Laboratorio Europeo di Spettroscopia Nonlineare (LENS), Università di Firenze, Largo Enrico Fermi 2, I – 50 125 Firenze, Italia.

Optical lattices allow to manipulate Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) – macroscopic quantum systems – on a microscopic scale. The BEC dynamics in the periodic potentials is governed by its coherent nature: A BEC moving in an optical lattice performs a superfluid motion with a velocity-dependent onset of dissipative processes [1]. The system is also ideally suited to study the Josephson effect: At a potential depth of the lattice sites exceeding the thermal energy BECs collectively tunnel from one site to the next, at a rate which depends on the difference in phase between the sites, while under the same conditions, thermal clouds of atoms are fixed to the wells of the optical lattice [2]. Moreover, atoms confined to tightly binding potential wells offer a controllable way to investigate ground state properties of the system [3] and lower dimensional physics, e. g., the condensation process in in two dimensions [4].

Supported by the EU under contracts HPRI-CT 1999-00111 & HPRN-CT-2000-00125, and by INFM under the contract “Photon Matter”.

[1] S. Burger et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 4447 (2001).

[2] F.S. Cataliotti et al., Science 293, 843 (2001).

[3] P. Pedri et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 220401 (2001).

[4] S. Burger et al., e-print cond-mat/0108037 (2001).