A Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice exhibits an abrupt transition manifested by the macroscopic wave function changing character from spatially localized to extended. Resulting from a bifurcation, this irreversible transition takes place as the interwell potential barrier is adiabatically decreased below a critical value. This is in sharp contrast to the corresponding one-dimensional case where such a bifurcation is absent and the extent of a localized mode is continuously tunable. We demonstrate how these phenomena can be experimentally explored.

• Received 9 December 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.030402