Chaos-assisted tunneling with cold atoms - art. no. 016221

In the context of quantum chaos, both theory and numerical analysis predict large fluctuations of the tunneling transition probabilities when irregula r dynamics is present at the classical level. Here we consider the nondissi pative quantum evolution of cold atoms trapped in a time-dependent modulate d periodic potential generated by two laser beams. We give some precise gui delines for the observation of chaos-assisted tunneling between invariant p hase space structures paired by time-reversal symmetry.