Experimental observation of the Anderson transition with atomic matter waves

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates the Anderson metal-insulator transition using atomic matter waves in a quantum chaotic system, providing critical parameters consistent with theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental observation of the Anderson transition with atomic matter waves, linking quantum chaos with disordered systems.

Findings

Critical parameters of the transition were measured.

The critical exponent matches numerical simulations.

The system effectively simulates a 3D disordered system.

Abstract

We realize experimentally an atom-optics quantum chaotic system, the quasiperiodic kicked rotor, which is equivalent to a 3D disordered system, that allow us to demonstrate the Anderson metal-insulator transition. Sensitive measurements of the atomic wavefunction dynamics and the use of finite-size scaling techniques make it possible to extract both the critical parameters and the critical exponent of the transition, which is in good agreement with the value obtained in numerical simulations of the 3D Anderson model.