Abstract
We report the first observation of atomic Wannier-Stark ladders in a potential formed by an accelerating standing wave of light.1 This is a fundamental effect of quantum transport in optical lattices. Wannier-Stark ladder resonances were predicted to occur in the band structure of an electron moving in a periodic lattice with a dc electric field, and have been recently observed in superlattices. Our work is the first spectroscopic study of Wannier-Stark ladders free from complications such as the impurities, lattice vibrations, and multi-particle interactions present in solids.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
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