Parametric instabilities of interacting bosons in periodically-driven 1D optical lattices

Understand

Periodically-driven quantum systems are currently explored in view of realizing novel many-body phases of matter.

• This approach is particularly promising in gases of ultracold atoms, where sophisticated shaking protocols can be realized and inter-particle interactions are well controlled.
• The combination of interactions and time-periodic driving, however, often leads to uncontrollable heating and instabilities, potentially preventing practical applications of Floquet-engineering in large many-body quantum systems.
• In this work, we experimentally identify the existence of parametric instabilities in weakly-interacting Bose-Einstein condensates in strongly-driven optical lattices through momentum-resolved measurements.