Non-monotonic diffusion rates in atom-optics L\'{e}vy kicked rotor

Abstract

The dynamics of chaotic Hamiltonian systems such as the kicked rotor continues to guide our understanding of transport and localization processes. The localized states of the quantum kicked rotor decay due to decoherence effects if subjected to stationary noise. The associated quantum diffusion increases monotonically as a function of a parameter characterising the noise distribution. In this work, for the Levy kicked atom-optics rotor, it is experimentally shown that by tuning a parameter characterizing the Levy distribution, quantum diffusion displays non-monotonic behaviour. The parameters for optimal diffusion rates are analytically obtained and they reveal a good agreement with the cold atom experiments and numerics. The non-monotonicity is shown to be a quantum effect that vanishes in the classical limit.