Theory of chaotic atomic transport in an optical lattice

Abstract

A semiclassical theory of chaotic atomic transport in a one-dimensional nondissipative optical lattice, when the standing-wave field and center-of-mass motion are treated classically, is developed. Using the basic equations of motion for the Bloch and translational atomic variables, we derive a stochastic map for the synchronized component of the atomic dipole moment that determines the center-of-mass motion. We find the analytical relations between the atomic and lattice parameters under which atoms typically alternate between flying through the lattice and being trapped in the wells of the optical potential. We use the stochastic map to derive formulas for the probability density functions (PDFs) for the flight and trapping events. Statistical properties of chaotic atomic transport strongly depend on the relations between the atomic and lattice parameters. We show that there is a good quantitative agreement between the analytical PDFs and those computed with the stochastic map and the basic equations of motion for different ranges of the parameters. Typical flight and trapping PDFs are shown to be broad distributions with power law segments with the slope $\ensuremath{-}1.5$ and exponential ``tails.'' The lengths of the power law and exponential segments of the PDFs depend on the values of the parameters. We find analytical conditions under which deterministic atomic transport has fractal properties and explain a hierarchical structure of the dynamical fractals.