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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 311: Bose-Einstein Kondensation I

Q 311.5: Talk

Wednesday, March 6, 2002, 15:00–15:15, HS 22/B01

Experiments in moving optical lattices — •Hartmut Häffner^1,2, Antoine Browaeys¹, Johannes Hecker Denschlag^1,2, Callum McKenzie¹, Kristian Helmerson¹, Steven L. Rolston¹, and William D. Phillips¹ — ¹National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA — ²Institut für Experimental Physik, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

We describe experiments where we transfer cold atoms from BEC’s into moving lattices adiabatically (with respect to the single particle wavefunction). The 13 recoil deep lattice drags the atoms along; but after unloading the atoms slowly, they are at rest again. The atoms’ “bizarre” behavior can be understood easily in the band structure picture. We show under which circumstances we can load the different bands with nearly 100 % efficiency. Furthermore, we describe Bloch oscillation experiments in the thus populated higher bands. Here it can happen for instance that accelerating the lattice in a particular direction the atoms gain momentum in the opposite direction.