Atomic current across an optical lattice

Alexey Ponomarev

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme

We devise a microscopic model for the emergence of a collision-induced, fermionic atomic current across a tilted optical lattice. Tuning the -- experimentally controlable -- parameters of the microscopic dynamics allows to switch from Ohmic to negative differential conductance. We show that relevant parameters can be calculated using the theory of (a)diabatic transitions between instanteneous eigenstates of a time-dependent Hamiltonian.