Interaction-induced decoherence of atomic BLOCH oscillations

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Dec 19;91(25):253002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.253002. Epub 2003 Dec 16.

Abstract

We show that the energy spectrum of the Bose-Hubbard model amended by a static field exhibits Wigner-Dyson level statistics. In itself a characteristic signature of quantum chaos, this induces the irreversible decay of Bloch oscillations of cold, interacting atoms loaded into an optical lattice, and provides a Hamiltonian model for interaction-induced decoherence.