Anderson Localization of Expanding Bose-Einstein Condensates in Random Potentials

Laurent Sanchez-Palencia (1) , David Clément (1) , Pierre Lugan (2) , Philippe Bouyer (1) , Georgy V. Shlyapnikov (3, 4) , Alain Aspect (1)

1 laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Optique atomique
2 LCFIO - Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique
3 LPTMS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques
4 Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute

We show that the expansion of an initially confined interacting 1D Bose-Einstein condensate can exhibit Anderson localization in a weak random potential. For speckle potentials used in quantum gases, the Fourier transform of the correlation function has a finite support and in 1D there is a mobility edge $\k_m=1/\sigma_R$, where $\sigma_R$ is the correlation length of the disorder. Then, for the initial healing length of the expanding condensate $\xi_{ini}>\sigma_R$ the localization is exponential, and for $\xi_{ini}<\sigma_R$ it changes to algebraic.

Mots clés: Bose-Einstein condensate; ultracold; cold; matterwave; Anderson; localization; disorder; random; mobility edge

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Laurent Sanchez-Palencia, David Clément, Pierre Lugan, Philippe Bouyer, Georgy V. Shlyapnikov, et al.. Anderson Localization of Expanding Bose-Einstein Condensates in Random Potentials. 2007. ⟨hal-00122278v2⟩