On Rabi oscillations between Bloch bands

Abstract

We study Rabi oscillations between the bands of an arbitrary biased superlattice in a tight-binding model. We reduce the problem to an equation of Whittaker--Hill type and, in absence of any known solutions in closed form, discuss different approximations to describe the oscillations between the Bloch bands. We identify regimes of weak and strong inter-band coupling and compare predictions for these Rabi oscillations to numerical results.