Bloch-Zener oscillations in a tunable optical honeycomb lattice

Journal Article · Wed Dec 04 04:00:00 EST 2013 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4848521· OSTI ID:22261927

Uehlinger, Thomas; Greif, Daniel; Jotzu, Gregor; Esslinger, Tilman ^[1]; Tarruell, Leticia ^[2]

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1. Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich (Switzerland)
2. Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland and LP2N, Universite Bordeaux 1, IOGS, CNRS, 351 cours de la Liberation, 33405 Talence (France)

Ultracold gases in optical lattices have proved to be a flexible tool to simulate many different phenomena of solid state physics [1, 2]. Recently, optical lattices with complex geometries have been realized [3, 4, 5, 6, 7], paving the way to simulating more realistic systems. The honeycomb structure has recently become accessible in an optical lattice composed of mutually perpendicular laser beams. This lattice structure exhibits topological features in its band structure – the Dirac points. At these points, two energy bands intersect linearly and the particles behave as relativistic Dirac fermions. In optical lattices, Bloch oscillations [8] resolved both in time and in quasi-momentum space can be directly observed. We make use of such Bloch-Zener oscillations to probe the vanishing energy gap at the Dirac points as well as their position in the band structure. In small band gap regions, we observe Landau-Zener tunneling [7, 9] to the second band and the regions of maximum transfer can be identified with the position of the Dirac points.

• OSTI ID: 22261927
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 1566; ISSN APCPCS; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
ENERGY GAP
HONEYCOMB STRUCTURES
OSCILLATIONS
PARTICLES
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
TUNNEL EFFECT