Matter waves can be coherently and adiabatically loaded and controlled in strongly driven optical lattices. This coherent control is used in order to modify the modulus and the sign of the tunneling matrix element in the tunneling Hamiltonian. Our fi
ndings pave the way for studies of driven quantum systems and new methods for engineering Hamiltonians that are impossible to realize with static techniques.
The time it takes a quantum system to complete a tunneling event (which in the case of cross-barrier tunneling can be viewed as the time spent in a classically forbidden area) is related to the time required for a state to evolve to an orthogonal sta
te, and an observation, i.e., a quantum mechanical projection on a particular basis, is required to distinguish one state from another. We have performed time-resolved measurements of Landau-Zener tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates in accelerated optical lattices, clearly resolving the steplike time dependence of the band populations. The use of different protocols enabled us to access the tunneling probability, in two different bases, namely, the adiabatic basis and the diabatic basis. The adiabatic basis corresponds to the eigenstates of the lattice, and the diabatic one to the freeparticle momentum eigenstates. Our findings pave the way towards more quantitative studies of the tunneling time for LZ transitions, which are of current interest in the context of optimal quantum control and the quantum speed limit.
We present our experimental investigations on the subject of nonlinearity-modified Bloch-oscillations and of nonlinear Landau-Zener tunneling between two energy bands in a rubidium Bose Einstein condensate in an accelerated periodic potential. Nonlin
earity introduces an asymmetry in Landau-Zener tunneling. We also present measurements of resonantly enhanced tunneling between the Wannier-Stark energy levels for Bose-Einstein condensates loaded into an optical lattice.
