Matter-wave chaos with a cold atom in a standing-wave laser field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how cold atoms in a standing-wave laser field exhibit wave-packet dynamics that can be regular or chaotic, with chaos manifesting in probability distributions and dependent on system parameters.

Contribution

It demonstrates the occurrence of matter-wave chaos in cold atoms and links quantum chaos manifestations to classical chaotic regimes based on system parameters.

Findings

Wave-packet dynamics can be regular or chaotic.

Manifestations of de Broglie-wave chaos are observed.

Transition probabilities depend on system parameter ratios.

Abstract

Coherent motion of cold atoms in a standing-wave field is interpreted as a propagation in two optical potentials. It is shown that the wave-packet dynamics can be either regular or chaotic with transitions between these potentials after passing field nodes. Manifestations of de Broglie-wave chaos are found in the behavior of the momentum and position probabilities and the Wigner function. The probability of those transitions depends on the ratio of the squared detuning to the Doppler shift and is large in that range of the parameters where the classical motion is shown to be chaotic.