Thursday, February 23, 2012

Klein Tunneling of a Quasirelativistic Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Optical Lattice

Tobias Salger, Christopher Grossert, Sebastian Kling, and Martin Weitz

A proof-of-principle experiment simulating effects predicted by relativistic wave equations with ultracold atoms in a bichromatic optical lattice that allows for a tailoring of the dispersion relation is reported. We observe the analog of Klein tunneling, the penetration of relativistic particles through a potential barrier without the exponential damping that is characteristic for nonrelativistic quantum tunneling. Both linear (relativistic) and quadratic (nonrelativistic) dispersion relations are investigated, and significant barrier transmission is observed only for the relativistic case.

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