Back-action driven transport of Bloch oscillating atoms in ring cavities

Talk

Transport under uniform bias in normal metallic systems requires dephasing of Bloch oscillations due to presence of impurities. In contrast, for atoms in optical lattices (with an external applied uniform bias force), it has been shown theoretically and experimentally that an amplitude and/or phase modulation of the lattice leads coherent transport and resonant tunneling. In the talk I will focus on resonant tunneling and directed transport of ultracold atoms that are strongly coupled to an optical lattice inside a ring-cavity and to which an uniform bias force is applied. The bias force induces Bloch oscillations and the atomic backaction on the cavity light field causes amplitude and phase modulation of the intra-cavity lattice. We show how different aspects of the transport such as the direction and magnitude can be simply controlled by changing the cavity detuning. This can also be considered as an example of an optomechanical system with the atomic Wannier-Stark ladder playing the role of a material oscillator.

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