Observing the Onset of Effective Mass

Abstract

The response of a particle in a periodic potential to an applied force is commonly described by an effective mass which accounts for the detailed interaction between the particle and the surrounding potential. Using a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87-Rb atoms initially in the ground band of an optical lattice, we experimentally show that the initial response of a particle to an applied force is in fact characterized by the bare mass. Subsequently, the particle response undergoes rapid oscillations and only over timescales long compared to that of the interband dynamics is the effective mass observed to be an appropriate description.

References in corpus (5)

• Direct observation of Anderson localization of matter-waves in a controlled disorder
• Conduction of Ultracold Fermions Through a Mesoscopic Channel
• Control of Interaction-Induced Dephasing of Bloch Oscillations
• Observing the Drop of Resistance in the Flow of a Superfluid Fermi Gas
• Response of a particle in a one-dimensional lattice to an applied force: Dynamics of the effective mass

Cited by in corpus (12)

• High harmonic generation from Bloch electrons in solids
• Strong-field Phenomena in Periodic Systems
• Negative mass hydrodynamics in a Spin-Orbit--Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Time-dependent population imaging for solid high harmonic generation
• High-order harmonic generation of doped semiconductor
• Conductivity spectrum of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice
• Interaction-assisted quantum tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensate out of a single trapping well
• Nonequilibrium dressing in a cavity with a movable reflecting mirror
• Dynamics of the effective mass and the anomalous velocity in two-dimensional lattices
• Quantum crystallography of Rydberg-dressed Bose gases on a square lattice
• Understanding Semiconductor Valence Mass
• Acceleration Theorem for Low-Dimensional Electron Systems with Off-Diagonal Effective Mass Components