Anderson localization of matter waves in tailored disordered potentials

Marie Piraud (1) , Alain Aspect (1) , Laurent Sanchez-Palencia (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Optique atomique

We show that, in contrast to immediate intuition, Anderson localization of noninteracting particles induced by a disordered potential in free space can increase (i.e., the localization length can decrease) when the particle energy increases, for appropriately tailored disorder correlations. We predict the effect in one, two, and three dimensions, and propose a simple method to observe it using ultracold atoms placed in optical disorder. The increase of localization with the particle energy can serve to discriminate quantum versus classical localization.

Domaines: Gaz Quantiques [cond-mat.quant-gas]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Optique [physics.optics]

Marie Piraud, Alain Aspect, Laurent Sanchez-Palencia. Anderson localization of matter waves in tailored disordered potentials. Physical Review A : Atomic, molecular, and optical physics [1990-2015], 2012, 85, pp.063611. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevA.85.063611⟩. ⟨hal-00588079⟩