Dynamical instability, Chaos, and Bloch oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates in tilted optical lattices

Abstract

We study the Bloch dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate of cold atoms by using the formalism of the discrete nonlinear Schroedinger equation. Depending on the static force magnitudes the system is shown to exhibit two qualitatively different regimes of Bloch oscillations - exponential decay for the static force magnitude less than some critical value (defined by the condensate density) and quasiperiodic oscillations in the opposite case. The relation of these regimes to the onset of chaos in the system is discussed.