We study the response of ultracold atoms to a weak force in the presence of a temporally strongly modulated optical lattice potential. It is experimentally demonstrated that the strong ac-driving allows for a tailoring of the mobility of a dilute ato
mic Bose-Einstein condensate with the atoms moving ballistically either along or against the direction of the applied force. Our results are in agreement with a theoretical analysis of the Floquet spectrum of a model system, thus revealing the existence of diabatic Floquet bands in the atoms band spectra and highlighting their role in the non-equilibrium transport of the atoms.
C. E. Creffield and F. Sols (Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 200601 (2009)) recently reported finite, directed time-averaged ratchet current, for a noninteracting quantum particle in a periodic potential even when time-reversal symmetry holds. As we explain in
this Comment, this result is incorrect, that is, time-reversal symmetry implies a vanishing current.
We investigate the quantum ratchet effect under the influence of weak dissipation which we treat within a Floquet-Markov master equation approach. A ratchet current emerges when all relevant symmetries are violated. Using time-reversal symmetric driv
ing we predict a purely dissipation-induced quantum ratchet current. This directed quantum transport results from bath-induced superpositions of non-transporting Floquet states.
