Single-particle tunneling in strongly driven double-well potentials

Phys Rev Lett. 2008 May 16;100(19):190405. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.190405. Epub 2008 May 14.

Abstract

We report on the first direct observation of coherent control of single-particle tunneling in a strongly driven double-well potential. In our setup atoms propagate in a periodic arrangement of double wells allowing the full control of the driving parameters such as frequency, amplitude, and even the space-time symmetry. Our experimental findings are in quantitative agreement with the predictions of the corresponding Floquet theory and are also compared to the predictions of a simple two mode model. Our experiments reveal directly the critical dependence of coherent destruction of tunneling on the generalized parity symmetry.