Beyond effective Hamiltonians: micromotion of Bose Einstein condensates in periodically driven optical lattices

Abstract

We investigate a Bose Einstein condensate held in a 1D optical lattice whose phase undergoes a fast oscillation using a statistical analysis. The averaged potential experienced by the atoms boils down to a periodic potential having the same spatial period but with a renormalized depth. However, the atomic dynamics also contains a \emph{micromotion} whose main features are revealed by a Kolmorogov-Smirnov analysis of the experimental momentum distributions. We furthermore discuss the impact of the micromotion on a quench process corresponding to a proper sudden change of the driving amplitude which reverses the curvature of the averaged potential.