ELECTRIC-FIELD-INDUCED NONLINEAR BLOCH OSCILLATIONS AND DYNAMICAL LOCALIZATION

The dynamics of a nonlinear Schrödinger chain in a time-varying, spatially uniform electric field is studied and proven to be integrable. In the limit of a static electric field, the system exhibits a periodic evolution which is a nonlinear counterpart of Bloch oscillations. It is shown that localization can be dynamically induced by a temporally harmonic field as a consequence of parametric resonances at certain field strengths. The effects of integrability-breaking discrete lattice terms are studied numerically: Nonlinear Bloch oscillations and dynamical localization are found to be a property of the lattice and not limited to the integrable case. © 1995 The American Physical Society.