Phase transition kinetics for a Bose Einstein condensate in a periodically driven band system

The dynamical transition of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate from a spatially periodic state to a staggered state with alternating sign in its wavefunction is experimentally studied using a one-dimensional phase modulated optical lattice. We observe the crossover from quantum to thermal fluctuations as the triggering mechanism for the nucleation of staggered states. In good quantitative agreement with numerical simulations based on the truncated Wigner method, we experimentally investigate how the nucleation time varies with the renormalized tunneling rate, the atomic density, and the driving frequency. The effective inverted energy band in the driven lattice is identified as the key ingredient which explains the emergence of gap solitons as observed in numerics and the possibility to nucleate staggered states from interband excitations as reported experimentally.