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Published Online July 5, 2001
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1061569

Reports

Submitted on April 12, 2001
Accepted on June 1, 2001

Observation of Chaos-Assisted Tunneling Between Islands of Stability

Daniel A. Steck 1, Windell H. Oskay 1, Mark G. Raizen 1*

1 Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1081, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: raizen{at}physics.utexas.edu.

We report the direct observation of quantum dynamical tunneling of atoms between separated momentum regions in phase space. We study how the tunneling oscillations are affected as a quantum symmetry is broken and as the initial atomic state is changed. We also provide evidence that the tunneling rate is greatly enhanced by the presence of chaos in the classical dynamics. This tunneling phenomenon represents a dramatic manifestation of underlying classical chaos in a quantum system.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)