Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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SYIM: Intrinsic Modes

SYIM 2: Intrinsic Modes II

SYIM 2.3: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 18:00–18:30, HSZ 04

Localized matter waves — •Markus Oberthaler — Kirchhoff Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 227, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

The realization of weakly interacting degenerate Bose-gases has opened up the way to experimentally investigate the regime, where interaction between matter waves can lead to localization. In this talk we will discuss the special case of localization in presence of repulsive atom-atom interaction.
In the first part of the talk we will concentrate on the propagation of interacting matter waves in periodic potentials. We will discuss in detail the formation of localized i.e. atomic gap solitons, in a weak periodic potential [1]. In the regime of deep periodic potentials i.e. an array of weakly coupled condensates, we have observed for the first time macroscopic quantum self-trapping [2]. In contrast to the gap soliton the localization is due to the modification of the local dynamics between neighbouring sites in the presence of interaction.
In the second part of the talk we will report on the localization due interaction in a double-well potential [3]. We confirm experimentally that the exhibited dynamics is a nonlinear generalization of the familiar Josephson effect which is characterized by oscillating but also self-trapped modes.
[1] B. Eiermann et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230401(2004)
[2] Th. Anker et al., Phys.Rev.Lett. 94, 020403 (2005)
[3] M. Albiez et al., Phys.Rev.Lett. 95,010402 (2005)