Decoherence as a Probe of Coherent Quantum Dynamics

Abstract

The effect of decoherence, induced by spontaneous emission, on the dynamics of cold atoms periodically kicked by an optical lattice is experimentally and theoretically studied. Ideally, the mean energy growth is essentially unaffected by weak decoherence, but the resonant momentum distributions are fundamentally altered. It is shown that experiments are inevitably sensitive to certain nontrivial features of these distributions, in a way that explains the puzzle of the observed enhancement of resonances by decoherence [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 074102 (2001)]. This clarifies both the nature of the coherent evolution, and the way in which decoherence disrupts it.

4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. E as a Brief Report. New version contains minor clarifying modifications to previous version, plus an additional reference [17]

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms
• Entanglement of atoms via cold controlled collisions
• Bloch oscillations and mean-field effects of Bose-Einstein condensates in 1-D optical lattices
• Quantum resonances and decoherence for delta-kicked atoms

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Experimental Realization of Quantum-Resonance Ratchets
• Resonant nonlinear quantum transport for a periodically kicked Bose condensate
• Flooding of regular islands by chaotic states
• Ballistic and localized transport for the atom optics kicked rotor in the limit of vanishing kicking period
• Theory of chaotic atomic transport in an optical lattice
• Chaotic ratchet dynamics with cold atoms in a pair of pulsed optical lattices
• Observation of Robust Quantum Resonance Peaks in an Atom Optics Kicked Rotor with Amplitude Noise
• Gravity-Sensitive Quantum Dynamics in Cold Atoms
• Experimental verification of a one-parameter scaling law for the quantum and "classical" resonances of the atom-optics kicked rotor
• Ehrenfest time in the weak dynamical localization
• Delocalized and Resonant Quantum Transport in Nonlinear Generalizations of the Kicked Rotor Model
• Saturation of fidelity in the atom-optics kicked rotor
• Steering random walks with kicked ultracold atoms
• The role of quasi-momentum in the resonant dynamics of the atom-optics kicked rotor
• Scaling law and stability for a noisy quantum system
• Fluctuations and Transients in Quantum-Resonant Evolution
• Spontaneous Emission in Quantum Walks of a Kicked Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Multifractal fluctuations in the survival probability of an open quantum system
• Can quantum fractal fluctuations be observed in an atom-optics kicked rotor experiment?
• Fidelity of the near resonant quantum kicked rotor
• Spontaneous-emission induced ratchet in atom-optics kicked rotor quantum walks