Dimensional effects on dynamical localization with cold cesium atoms

Summary form only given. Dynamical localization is one of the signatures of quantum chaos most intensely studied in recent years. These studies rely on the experimental realization of a kicked rotor by placing cold atoms in a far detuned, periodically driven, stationary wave. For a set of parameters such that the classical limit of such a system shows a chaotic diffusive motion in the momentum space, quantum interferences have been shown to suppress the chaotic diffusion in the quantum case. The momentum distribution then presents a characteristic double exponential form. We have performed an experiment in which dynamical localization is studied in the presence of a stationary wave driven by two series of pulses that can have commensurable or incommensurable frequencies, which can be shown to be formally equivalent to perform the experiment in two dimensions. We have thus shown that localization is still observed when the two frequencies are commensurable, but that the classical diffusion in momentum space persists for a much longer time if the frequencies are incommensurable.