Abstract

In our experiments, a 3D optical lattice¹ was loaded from an MOT. The atoms were then excited by quickly varying the light intensity or detuning. Just before the change, a sizable fraction of the atoms are localized in states of the lattice wells. After, or while, the lattice potentials are varied, the atomic wave packets are projected into a new set of bound states and an oscillatory, “breathing mode” wave packet is created.²,³ In our experiments, we detect the oscillatory motion of the wave packet by temporal spectroscopy of the fluorescence of the confined atoms. Simply put, this technique works because the lattice potential maps directly onto the spatially varying intensity of the light field and hence as the atomic wave packet width oscillates back and forth, the overlap of the packet with the field varies, and so the fluorescence varies.

© 1997 Optical Society of America