Orbital many-body dynamics of bosons in the second Bloch band of an optical lattice

Abstract

A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms is prepared in one of two degenerate energy minima in the second Bloch band of an optical square lattice. A subsequent oscillation of the BEC between the two energy minima is observed, which is driven by two distinct collision processes: the conventional Hubbard-type on-site collision and a collision process that changes the orbital flavor. The oscillation frequency scales with the relative strength of these collisional interactions, which can be readily tuned via an experimentally well controlled distortion of the unit cell. The observations are compared to a quantum model of two single-particle modes and to a semi-classical multi-band tight-binding simulation of 12x12 tubular sites of the lattice. Both models reproduce the observed oscillatory quantum many-body dynamics and show the correct dependence of the oscillation frequency on the ratio between the strengths of the on-site and flavor-changing collision processes.

10 pages, 11 figures, PRL (2021)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Intrinsic Anomalous Hall Effect in a Bosonic Chiral Superfluid
• Longitudinal and transversal resonant tunneling of interacting bosons in a two-dimensional Josephson junction: Mean-field and many-body dynamics
• Chiral orbital order of interacting bosons without higher bands
• Spin dynamics dominated by superexchange via virtual molecules
• Intrinsic anomalous Hall effect across the magnetic phase transition of a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• Controlling higher-orbital quantum phases of ultracold atoms via coupling to optical cavities
• Interference of longitudinal and transversal fragmentations in the Josephson tunneling dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates
• Many-body effects in a composite bosonic Josephson junction