Hannover 2010 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 10: Quantum Gases: Bosons II
Q 10.5: Talk
Monday, March 8, 2010, 17:30–17:45, E 001
Landau-Zener dynamics between pairwise coupled 1d-tubes — •Yu-Ao Chen1,2, Stefan Trotzky1, Ute Schnorrberger1, Sebastian Huber3, Ehud Altman3, and Immanuel Bloch1,2 — 1Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Schellingstasse 4, 80799 München, Germany — 2Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, 85748 Garching, Germany — 3Department of Condensed Matter Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel
Non-equilibrium dynamics attracted a lot of recent interest. The departure from standard statistical mechanics is studied in a large variety of systems, at the heart of which lies the very fundamental setup of two levels undergoing an anti-crossing, knowing as the famous Landau-Zener (LZ) problem. Non-interacting atoms in a double well with tunable energy difference provide a generic two-mode system to study the dynamics of a LZ sweep. We experimentally realize a generalized LZ problem in an array of pairwise coupled tubes with interacting ultracold 87Rb atoms in an optical superlattice potential. We investigate the impact of interactions and dimensionality on the sweep fidelity for sweeps in the ground state and in the excited state. The results show that interactions in the tubes improve the fidelity for sweeps in the ground state. For sweeps in the excited state we find relaxation of the system which can be explained in terms of one-dimensional low-energy excitations along the tubes, providing an intrinsic bath for thermalization.