title: Controlled tunneling of cold atoms: from full suppression to strong enhancement.
abstract: Two recent experiments have demonstrated the phenomenon of dynamical tunneling of cold atoms interacting with standing electromagnetic waves. We show by quantitative calculations that one can achieve a control of the tunneling period over an orders of magnitude range by changing the frequency difference of the waves by about 10% only. In this narrow parameter region, the mechanism of the tunneling oscillations evolves from the two-state to the three-state one. Our calculations demonstrate that the change in the underlying mechanism leads to the dramatic enhancement of the dynamical tunneling. Moreover, a complete suppression of the dynamical tunneling can also be achieved in the cold atom setup.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Vitali
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Averbukh
authors.forename: Shmuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Osovski
authors.forename: Nimrod
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Moiseyev