Wavepacket reconstruction via local dynamics in a parabolic lattice

Quentin Thommen (1, 2) , Véronique Zehnlé (1, 2) , Jean Claude Garreau (1, 2)

1 PhLAM - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules - UMR 8523
2 CERLA - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Lasers et Applications

We study the dynamics of a wavepacket in a potential formed by the sum of a periodic lattice and of a parabolic potential. The dynamics of the wavepacket is essentially a superposition of ``local Bloch oscillations", whose frequency is proportional to the local slope of the parabolic potential. We show that the amplitude and the phase of the Fourier transform of a signal characterizing this dynamics contains information about the amplitude and the phase of the wavepacket at a given lattice site. Hence, complete reconstruction of the the wavepacket in the real space can be performed from the study of the dynamics of the system.

Domaines: Physique Atomique [physics.atom-ph]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Quentin Thommen, Véronique Zehnlé, Jean Claude Garreau. Wavepacket reconstruction via local dynamics in a parabolic lattice. Physical Review A : Atomic, molecular, and optical physics [1990-2015], 2003, 67, pp.013416. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevA.67.013416⟩. ⟨hal-00012616⟩