Wavepacket reconstruction via local dynamics in a parabolic lattice

Thommen, Quentin; Zehnle, Veronique; Garreau, Jean Claude

Wavepacket reconstruction via local dynamics in a parabolic lattice

Authors

Thommen, Quentin

Zehnle, Veronique

Garreau, Jean Claude

Description

We study the dynamics of a wavepacket in a potential formed by the sum of a periodic lattice and of a parabolic potential. The dynamics of the wavepacket is essentially a superposition of ``local Bloch oscillations'', whose frequency is proportional to the local slope of the parabolic potential. We show that the amplitude and the phase of the Fourier transform of a signal characterizing this dynamics contains information about the amplitude and the phase of the wavepacket at a given lattice site. Hence, {\em complete} reconstruction of the the wavepacket in the real space can be performed from the study of the dynamics of the system.
4 pages, 3 figures, RevTex 4