Three-Dimensional Anderson Localization of Ultracold Matter
Abstract
Anderson localization (AL) is a ubiquitous interference phenomenon in which waves fail to propagate in a disordered medium. We observe three-dimensional AL of noninteracting ultracold matter by allowing a spin-polarized atomic Fermi gas to expand into a disordered potential. A two-component density distribution emerges consisting of an expanding mobile component and a nondiffusing localized component. We extract a mobility edge that increases with the disorder strength, whereas the thermally averaged localization length is shown to decrease with disorder strength and increase with particle energy. These measurements provide a benchmark for more sophisticated theories of AL.
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Published In
Science
Volume 334 | Issue 6052
7 October 2011
7 October 2011
Copyright
Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 27 May 2011
Accepted: 15 August 2011
Published in print: 7 October 2011
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: We thank L. Sanchez-Palencia for stimulating discussions and M. White and P. Koehring for technical assistance. We acknowledge funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Optical Lattice Emulator program, the Office of Naval Research (award N000140911023), and the NSF (award 0855027). The data presented in this paper are available for download at www.illinois.edu/~bdemarco.
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