Enhancement of On-Site Interactions of Tunnelling Ultracold Atoms in Optical Potentials using Radio-Frequency Dressing

Abstract

We show how it is possible to more than double the on-site interaction energy of neutral atoms in optical potentials by the technique of radio-frequency (rf) dressing, while maintaining interwell dynamics. We calculate Bose-Hubbard parameters for rf dressed optical lattices and arrays of rf dressed dipole traps. We show that decreasing the distance between wells, by the interpolation of wells confining different m_F states, increases the interaction energy more than decreasing the height of the classically forbidden region between existing wells. The schemes we propose have negligible Landau-Zener losses caused by atomic motion; this was a dominant effect in the first experimental demonstration of the modification of an optical potential by radio-frequency dressing.