Adiabaticity and localization in one-dimensional incommensurate lattices

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the role of localization on the adiabaticity of loading a Bose-Einstein condensate into a one-dimensional optical potential comprised of a shallow primary lattice plus one or two perturbing lattice(s) of incommensurate period. We find that even a very weak perturbation causes dramatic changes in the momentum distribution and makes adiabatic loading of the combined lattice much more difficult than for a single period lattice. We interpret our results using a band structure model and the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation.