Bloch oscillations sustained by nonlinearity

Abstract We demonstrate that nonlinearity may play a constructive role in supporting Bloch oscillations in a model which is discrete, in one dimension and continuous in the orthogonal one. The model can be experimentally realized in several fields of physics such as optics and Bose-Einstein condensa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: R. Driben, V. V. Konotop, T. Meier, A. V. Yulin
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Nature Portfolio 2017
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R
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Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/53f2d817793c49bcb22e4a1106f29d91
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Summary:Abstract We demonstrate that nonlinearity may play a constructive role in supporting Bloch oscillations in a model which is discrete, in one dimension and continuous in the orthogonal one. The model can be experimentally realized in several fields of physics such as optics and Bose-Einstein condensates. We demonstrate that designing an optimal relation between the nonlinearity and the linear gradient strength provides extremely long-lived Bloch oscillations with little degradation. Such robust oscillations can be observed for a broad range of parameters and even for moderate nonlinearities and large enough values of linear potential. We also present an approximate analytical description of the wave packet’s evolution featuring a hybrid Bloch oscillating wave-soliton behavior that excellently corresponds to the direct numerical simulations.