Single Particle Tunneling in Strongly Driven Double Well Potentials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates direct control and observation of single particle tunneling in a strongly driven double well potential, confirming theoretical predictions and highlighting the role of symmetry in tunneling suppression.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental realization of coherent control of single particle tunneling in a driven double well system with tunable parameters.

Findings

Experimental confirmation of Floquet theory predictions.

Observation of coherent destruction of tunneling.

Dependence of tunneling suppression on symmetry.

Abstract

We report on the first direct observation of coherent control of single particle tunneling in a strongly driven double well potential. In our setup atoms propagate in a periodic arrangement of double wells allowing the full control of the driving parameters such as frequency, amplitude and even the space-time symmetry. Our experimental findings are in quantitative agreement with the predictions of the corresponding Floquet theory and are also compared to the predictions of a simple two mode model. Our experiments reveal directly the critical dependence of coherent destruction of tunneling on the generalized parity symmetry.