Shaking a Condensate in an Optical Lattice

Putting a Bose-Einstein condensate in a shaken optical lattice gives access to a new form of quantum state engineering, namely to modify the Bloch bands of the atoms in a controllable way. This is the subject of the paper “Exploring dynamic localization with a Bose-Einstein condensate” published in Physical Review A and co-authored by André Eckardt, postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Maciej Lewenstein’s group, and researchers at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Oldenburg (Germany) and the Università di Pisa (Italy). The result has been highlighted in the APS online magazine Physics.