title: Instabilities of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a periodic potential: an experimental investigation.
abstract: By accelerating a Bose-Einstein condensate in a controlled way across the edge of the Brillouin zone of a 1D optical lattice, we investigate the stability of the condensate in the vicinity of the zone edge. Through an analysis of the visibility of the interference pattern after a time-of-flight and the widths of the interference peaks, we characterize the onset of instability as the acceleration of the lattice is decreased. We briefly discuss the significance of our results with respect to recent theoretical work.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cristiani
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Morsch
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Malossi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jona-Lasinio
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Anderlini
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Courtade
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Arimondo