Instability and control of a periodically-driven Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper explores how strong periodic driving affects the stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice, revealing instability conditions and proposing control methods for atomic wavepacket dispersion.

Contribution

It demonstrates how controlling the sign of tunneling in a driven Bose-Einstein condensate can manage wavepacket dispersion and enable a pulsed atomic soliton laser.

Findings

Condensate becomes unstable when effective tunneling is negative.

Controlling tunneling sign influences wavepacket dispersion.

Potential to create a pulsed atomic soliton laser.

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate held in an optical lattice under the influence of a strong periodic driving potential. Studying the mean-field version of the Bose-Hubbard model reveals that the condensate becomes highly unstable when the effective intersite tunneling becomes negative. We further show how controlling the sign of the tunneling can be used as a powerful tool to manage the dispersion of an atomic wavepacket, and thus to create a pulsed atomic soliton laser.