Markus Glück, Hankel Michael, Andrey R. Kolovsky, Hans Jürgen Korsch

• We study the transitions between the ground and excited Wannier states induced by a weak ac field. Because the upper Wannier states are several order of magnitude less stable than the ground states, these transitions decrease the global stability of the system characterized by the rate of probability leakage or decay rate. Using nonhermitian resonant perturbation theory we obtain an analytical expression for this induced decay rate. The analytical results are compared with exact numerical calculations of the system decay rate.