Nonlinear coherent dynamics of an atom in an optical lattice

Abstract

We consider a simple model of the lossless interaction between a two-level single atom and a standing-wave single-mode laser field which creates a one-dimensional optical lattice. The internal dynamics of the atom is governed by the laser field, which is treated as classical with a large number of photons. The center-of-mass classical atomic motion is governed by the optical potential and the internal atomic degrees of freedom. The resulting Hamilton-Schro dinger equations of motion are a five-dimensional nonlinear dynamical system with two integrals of motion, and the total atomic energy and the Bloch vector length are conserved during the interaction. In our previous papers, the motion of the atom has been shown to be regular or chaotic (in the sense of exponential sensitivity to small variations of the initial conditions and/or the system’s control parameters) depending on the values of the control parameters, atom-field detuning, and recoil frequency. At the exact atom-field resonance, the exact solutions for both the external and internal atomic degrees of freedom can be derived. The center-of-mass motion does not depend in this case on the internal variables, whereas the Rabi oscillations of the atomic inversion is a frequency-modulated signal with the frequency defined by the atomic position in the optical lattice. We study analytically the correlations between the Rabi oscillations and the center-of-mass motion in two limiting cases of a regular motion out of the resonance: (1) far-detuned atoms and (2) rapidly moving atoms. This paper is concentrated on chaotic atomic motion that may be quantified strictly by positive values of the maximal Lyapunov exponent. It is shown that an atom, depending on the value of its total energy, can either oscillate chaotically in a well of the optical potential, or fly ballistically with weak chaotic oscillations of its momentum, or wander in the optical lattice, changing the direction of motion in a chaotic way. In the regime of chaotic wandering, the atomic motion is shown to have fractal properties. We find a useful tool to visualize complicated atomic motion-Poincare mapping of atomic trajectories in an effective three-dimensional phase space onto planes of atomic internal variables and momentum. The Poincare mappings are constructed using the translational invariance of the standing laser wave. We find common features with typical nonhyperbolic Hamiltonian systems-chains of resonant islands of different sizes imbedded in a stochastic sea, stochastic layers, bifurcations, and so on. The phenomenon of the atomic trajectories sticking to boundaries of regular islands, which should have a great influence on atomic transport in optical lattices, is found and demonstrated numerically.