Dipole and Bloch oscillations of cold atoms in a parabolic lattice

Abstract

The paper studies the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a 1D parabolic optical lattice, and excited by a sudden shift of the lattice center. Depending on the magnitude of the initial shift, the condensate undergoes either dipole or Bloch oscillations. The effects of dephasing and of atom-atom interactions on these oscillations are discussed.Comment: 3 pages, to appear in proceeding of LPHYS'05 conference (July 4-8, 2005, Kyoto, Japan