Impact of Lattice Vibrations on the Dynamics of a Spinor Atom-Optics Kicked Rotor^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper that considers the effect of amplitude and phase noise on the dynamics of spinor atom-optics kicked rotor. The results seem new to me. My only minor comment is that in the abstract some spelling freely evolved. I suggest to change "doubly kicked atom-topics kicked rotor" to "doubly kicked atom-optics rotor". 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a down-to-earth study of noise effects on interesting physical effects in kicked-rotor systems.   There are still many interesting effects to be studied in this system, but noise effects must be carefully investigated before experiments can be started.

Authors considered quantum walks and topological phases based on the kicked rotor model and checked noise effects with care (two kinds of noise in specific optical lattice realizations).  It is confirmed that with the current noise level associated with present experimental techniques,  previously claimed novel effects in variants of the kicked rotor model can be observed.  Quantum-classical transition can be also observed by playing with the noise level.   It seems that the spread of the quasi-momentum should be maintained below or around the 1% level to observe the topological effects as shown in Ref. 34.   These results are not surprising, but will be very useful.

This manuscript is carefully prepared and considering its timely relevance to experiments, I happily recommend it to be published in its present form.