We report experimental results on the dynamics and phase evolution of
Bose-Einstein condensates in 1D optical lattices. The dynamical behaviour is
studied by adiabatically loading the condensate into the lattice and
subsequently switching off the magnetic trap. In this case, the condensate is
free to expand inside the periodic structure of the optical lattice. The phase
evolution of the condensate, on the other hand, can be studied by
non-adiabatically switching on the periodic potential. We observe decays and
revivals of the interference pattern after a time-of-flight.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; submitted to the Proceedings of the 11th Laser
Physics Workshop, Bratislava 200
