Hainaut, Clément

Date:  Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Time: 11:00
Place: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - Room CH C3 30
Host: Jean-Philippe Brantut

Experimental observation of the Coherent Forward Scattering: quantum interferences in the strong localization regime

Clément Hainaut
Université de Lille, CNRS, France

The atomic kicked rotor is a paradigm for studying quantum chaos
and Anderson localization phenomena in atomic systems. Carefully
engineering the symmetry properties of the kicked rotor Hamiltonian
[1] allowed us to experimentally investigate the coherent nature of the
interference paths which represent the building blocks of the Anderson
localization. In particular, we observed the enhanced return to the
origin phenomenon, a manifestation of weak localization, closely related
to the coherent backscattering.
Moreover, more subtle interference mechanisms lead to the so-called
Coherent Forward Scattering (CFS) which has theoretically been pre-
dicted recently [2], and represents a genuine signature of the Anderson
(strong) localization [3]. We will present the rst experimental evidence
of the observation of CFS and discuss two key distinctive features: the
characteristic timescale and robustness with respect to time-reversal-
symmetry breaking.

[1] C. Tian, A. Kamenev, and A. Larkin, Phys. Rev. B 72, 045108 (2005).
[2] T. Karpiuk, N. Cherroret, K. Lee, B. Gr emaud, C. A. M uller, and
C. Miniatura, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 190601 (2012).
[3] S. Ghosh, N. Cherroret, B. Gr emaud, C. Miniatura, and D. Delande,