Experimental study of the transport of coherent interacting matter-waves in a 1D random potential induced by laser speckle

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a Bose-Einstein condensate's coherent matter-wave expands in a one-dimensional laser speckle-induced random potential, revealing transport suppression and disorder-induced trapping effects.

Contribution

It provides a detailed experimental analysis of matter-wave transport in 1D disordered potentials, including calibration, self-averaging properties, and comparison with theoretical models.

Findings

Transport suppression observed in the random potential

Disorder-induced trapping effects identified

Agreement with theoretical predictions discussed

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of the 1D expansion of a coherent interacting matterwave (a Bose-Einstein condensate) in the presence of disorder. A 1D random potential is created via laser speckle patterns. It is carefully calibrated and the self-averaging properties of our experimental system are discussed. We observe the suppression of the transport of the BEC in the random potential. We discuss the scenario of disorder-induced trapping taking into account the radial extension in our experimental 3D BEC and we compare our experimental results with the theoretical predictions.