Ratchet for Cold Rubidium Atoms: The Asymmetric Optical Lattice

Abstract

It was suggested recently that particles evolving in a bipotential that is macroscopically flat but locally asymmetric can be set into directed motion [J. Prost et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 2652 (1994)]. We show evidence of this effect using cold rubidium atoms in a grey optical lattice.