Enhancement of on-site interactions of tunneling ultracold atoms in optical potentials using radio-frequency dressing

Abstract

We show how it is possible to more than double the on-site interaction energy of neutral atoms in optical potentials by the technique of radio-frequency (rf) dressing, while maintaining interwell dynamics. We calculate Bose-Hubbard parameters for rf-dressed optical lattices and arrays of rf-dressed dipole traps. We show that decreasing the distance between wells, by the interpolation of wells confining different ${m}_{F}$ states, increases the interaction energy more than decreasing the height of the classically forbidden region between existing wells. The schemes we propose have negligible Landau-Zener losses caused by atomic motion; this was a dominant effect in the first experimental demonstration of the modification of an optical potential by radio-frequency dressing.