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Bloch oscillation is a phenomenon from solid state physics. It describes the oscillation of a particle (e.g. an electron) confined in a periodic potential when a constant force is acting on it.
It was first pointed out by Bloch and Zener while studying the electrical properties of crystals. In particular, they predicted that the motion of electrons in a perfect crystal under the action of a constant electric field would be oscillatory instead of uniform. While in natural crystals this phenomenon is extremely hard to observe due to the scattering of electrons by lattice defects, it has been observed in semiconductor superlattices and in different physical systems such as cold atoms in an optical potential and ultrasmall Josephson junctions.
Derivation
The one-dimensional equation of motion for an electron in a constant electric field E is:
English: Target pattern (numerical calculation) in a two-component reaction-diffusion system of Fitzhugh-Nagumo type, produced by Dr. H. U. Bödeker.
The image is a snapshot of a periodically repeating sequence in which the center of the target pattern oscillates while the individual rings propagate from the center to the domain boundary. A finite-element algorithm was used in the calculation.
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