Anderson localization of matter waves in tailored disordered potentials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tailored disorder correlations can cause the localization length of matter waves to decrease with increasing energy, a counterintuitive effect observable in ultracold atom experiments across multiple dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel prediction that disorder correlations can invert the usual energy dependence of Anderson localization in free space.

Findings

Localization length decreases with energy in tailored disorder

Effect predicted in 1D, 2D, and 3D systems

Proposes experimental observation with ultracold atoms

Abstract

We show that, in contrast to immediate intuition, Anderson localization of noninteracting particles induced by a disordered potential in free space can increase (i.e., the localization length can decrease) when the particle energy increases, for appropriately tailored disorder correlations. We predict the effect in one, two, and three dimensions, and propose a simple method to observe it using ultracold atoms placed in optical disorder. The increase of localization with the particle energy can serve to discriminate quantum versus classical localization.