No Arabic abstract
We present here a detailed study of the behaviour of a three dimensional Brownian motor based on cold atoms in a double optical lattice [P. Sjolund et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 190602 (2006)]. This includes both experiments and numerical simulations of a Brownian particle. The potentials used are spatially and temporally symmetric, but combined spatiotemporal symmetry is broken by phase shifts and asymmetric transfer rates between potentials. The diffusion of atoms in the optical lattices is rectified and controlled both in direction and speed along three dimensions. We explore a large range of experimental parameters, where irradiances and detunings of the optical lattice lights are varied within the dissipative regime. Induced drift velocities in the order of one atomic recoil velocity have been achieved.
We study the influence of the lattice topography and the coupling between motion in different directions, for a three-dimensional Brownian motor based on cold atoms in a double optical lattice. Due to controllable relative spatial phases between the lattices, our Brownian motor can induce drifts in arbitrary directions. Since the lattices couple the different directions, the relation between the phase shifts and the directionality of the induced drift is non trivial. Here is therefore this relation investigated experimentally by systematically varying the relative spatial phase in two dimensions, while monitoring the vertically induced drift and the temperature. A relative spatial phase range of 2pi x 2pi is covered. We show that a drift, controllable both in speed and direction, can be achieved, by varying the phase both parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the measured induced drift. The experimental results are qualitatively reproduced by numerical simulations of a simplified, classical model of the system.
The rectification of noise into directed movement or useful energy is utilized by many different systems. The peculiar nature of the energy source and conceptual differences between such Brownian motor systems makes a characterization of the performance far from straightforward. In this work, where the Brownian motor consists of atoms interacting with dissipative optical lattices, we adopt existing theory and present experimental measurements for both the efficiency and the transport coherence. We achieve up to 0.3% for the efficiency and 0.01 for the Peclet number.
The phenomenon of photonic band gaps in one-dimensional optical lattices is reviewed using a microscopic approach. Formally equivalent to the transfer matrix approach in the thermodynamic limit, a microscopic model is required to study finite-size effects, such as deviations from the Bragg condition. Microscopic models describing both scalar and vectorial light are proposed, as well as for two- and three-level atoms. Several analytical results are compared to experimental data, showing a good agreement.
Strontium optical lattice clocks have the potential to simultaneously interrogate millions of atoms with a high spectroscopic quality factor of $4 times 10^{-17}$. Previously, atomic interactions have forced a compromise between clock stability, which benefits from a large atom number, and accuracy, which suffers from density-dependent frequency shifts. Here, we demonstrate a scalable solution which takes advantage of the high, correlated density of a degenerate Fermi gas in a three-dimensional optical lattice to guard against on-site interaction shifts. We show that contact interactions are resolved so that their contribution to clock shifts is orders of magnitude lower than in previous experiments. A synchronous clock comparison between two regions of the 3D lattice yields a $5 times 10^{-19}$ measurement precision in 1 hour of averaging time.
We address the properties of fully three-dimensional solitons in complex parity-time (PT)-symmetric periodic lattices with focusing Kerr nonlinearity, and uncover that such lattices can stabilize both, fundamental and vortex-carrying soliton states. The imaginary part of the lattice induces internal currents in the solitons that strongly affect their domains of existence and stability. The domain of stability for fundamental solitons can extend nearly up to the PT-symmetry breaking point, where the linear lattice spectrum becomes complex. Vortex solitons feature spatially asymmetric profiles in the PT-symmetric lattices, but they are found to still exist as stable states within narrow regions. Our results provide the first example of continuous families of stable three-dimensional propagating solitons supported by complex potentials.