Experimental study of the transport of coherent interacting matter-waves in a 1D random potential induced by laser speckle

David Clément (1) , Andrès F. Varòn (1) , Jocelyn A. Retter (1) , Laurent Sanchez-Palencia (1) , Alain Aspect (1) , Philippe Bouyer (1)

1 laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique atomique

We present a detailed analysis of the 1D expansion of a coherent interacting matterwave (a Bose-Einstein condensate) in the presence of disorder. A 1D random potential is created via laser speckle patterns. It is carefully calibrated and the self-averaging properties of our experimental system are discussed. We observe the suppression of the transport of the BEC in the random potential. We discuss the scenario of disorder-induced trapping taking into account the radial extension in our experimental 3D BEC and we compare our experimental results with the theoretical predictions.

Mots clés: ultra-cold atoms; Bose-Einstein condensation; disorder; random; speckle; transport; diffusion; localization

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]; Optique [physics.optics]

David Clément, Andrès F. Varòn, Jocelyn A. Retter, Laurent Sanchez-Palencia, Alain Aspect, et al.. Experimental study of the transport of coherent interacting matter-waves in a 1D random potential induced by laser speckle. New Journal of Physics, 2006, 8, pp.165. ⟨10.1088/1367-2630/8/8/165⟩. ⟨hal-00077779v2⟩