Electric quantum walks with individual atoms

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Date: 
2013-05-07 - 2014-01-28
Author(s): 

Maximilian Genske, Wolfgang Alt, Andreas Steffen, Albert H. Werner, Reinhard F. Werner, Dieter Meschede, Andrea Alberti

Reference: 

Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 190601

We report on the experimental realization of electric quantum walks, which mimic the effect of an electric field on a charged particle in a lattice. Starting from a textbook implementation of discrete-time quantum walks, we introduce an extra operation in each step to implement the effect of the field. The recorded dynamics of such a quantum particle exhibits features closely related to Bloch oscillations and interband tunneling. In particular, we explore the regime of strong fields, demonstrating contrasting quantum behaviors: quantum resonances versus dynamical localization depending on whether the accumulated Bloch phase is a rational or irrational fraction of 2π.