Interacting ultracold atomic kicked rotors: Loss of dynamical localization

We study the fate of dynamical localization of two quantum kicked rotors with contact interaction, which relates to experimental realizations of the rotors with ultra-cold atomic gases. A single kicked rotor is known to exhibit dynamical localization, which takes place in momentum space. The contact interaction affects the evolution of the relative momentum k of a pair of interacting rotors in a non-analytic way. Consequently the evolution operator U is exciting large relative momenta with amplitudes which decay only as a power law 1/k 4. This is in contrast to the center-of-mass momentum K for which the amplitudes excited by U decay superexponentially fast with K. Therefore dynamical localization is preserved for the center-of-mass momentum, but destroyed for the relative momentum for any nonzero strength of interaction. © The Author(s) 20171