Diffusive density profiles in a cold-atom expansion experiment

Abstract

In a recent experiment [McGehee et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 145303 (2013)], the expansion of non-interacting ultracold fermions was studied in a random speckle potential, and the observed density profiles were interpreted based on 3D Anderson localization. The purpose of this note is to demonstrate that slow diffusion of particles with a broad energy distribution and an energy-dependent diffusion coefficient leads to density profiles that agree with the measured data, but not with the behavior expected for 3D Anderson localization.