title: Laser controlled tunneling in a vertical optical lattice.
abstract: Raman laser pulses are used to induce coherent tunneling between neighboring sites of a vertical 1D optical lattice. Such tunneling occurs when the detuning of a probe laser from the atomic transition frequency matches multiples of the Bloch frequency, allowing for a spectroscopic control of the coupling between Wannier-Stark (WS) states. In particular, we prepare coherent superpositions of WS states of adjacent sites, and investigate the coherence time of these superpositions by realizing a spatial interferometer. This scheme provides a powerful tool for coherent manipulation of external degrees of freedom of cold atoms, which is a key issue for quantum information processing.
authors.affiliation: LNE-SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris, LNE, CNRS, UPMC, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Q
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Beaufils
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tackmann
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pelle
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pelisson
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wolf
authors.forename: F Pereira
authors.initials: FP
authors.lastname: dos Santos