Dynamical localization in periodically kicked 1D bichromatic optical lattices

We report experimental studies of localization in one-dimensional periodically kicked incommensurate optical lattices as proposed in [1]. In these experiments a secondary incommensurate lattice is periodically pulsed, creating a temporally periodic but spatially quasiperiodic modulation on a primary translation-symmetric optical lattice potential. In agreement with theoretical predictions, we observe a transition between localized and delocalized phases which depends on both kick strength and kick period. At large kick periods higher-band effects cause deviations from tight-binding theoretical predictions, but these effects are non-monotonic in kick period and can be suppressed by choosing the drive waveform appropriately. We describe possible applications in Floquet engineering, and experimentally investigate the consequence of temporal aperiodicity in the secondary lattice pulses [2].  

[1] Qin et al., Phys. Rev. B 90, 054303 (2014)

[2] Čadež et al., Phys. Rev. B 96, 144301 (2017)