Expansion dynamics of interacting bosons in homogeneous lattices in one and two dimensions

J. P. Ronzheimer*, M. Schreiber, S. Braun, S. Hodgman, S. Langer, I. P. McCulloch, F. Heidrich-Meisner, I. Bloch, U. Schneider

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

241 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We experimentally and numerically investigate the expansion of initially localized ultracold bosons in homogeneous one- and two-dimensional optical lattices. We find that both dimensionality and interaction strength crucially influence these nonequilibrium dynamics. While the atoms expand ballistically in all integrable limits, deviations from these limits dramatically suppress the expansion and lead to the appearance of almost bimodal cloud shapes, indicating diffusive dynamics in the center surrounded by ballistic wings. For strongly interacting bosons, we observe a dimensional crossover of the dynamics from ballistic in the one-dimensional hard-core case to diffusive in two dimensions, as well as a similar crossover when higher occupancies are introduced into the system.

Original languageEnglish
Article number205301
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume110
Issue number20
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 May 2013
Externally publishedYes

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