Decay, interference, and chaos: How simple atoms mimic disorder

Abstract

We establish a close quantitative analogy between the excitation and ionization process of highly excited one electron Rydberg states under microwave driving and charge transport across disordered 1D lattices. Our results open a new arena for Anderson localization - a disorder induced effect - in a large class of perfectly deterministic, decaying atomic systems.

6 pages, 4 figures (2 in colour), proceedings of The International Conference on Multiphoton Processes (ICOMP IX), October 2002: http://www.iesl.forth.gr/icomp9 ;submitted to EPJ