The Mott Transition in a Bose Gas Measured Through Time of Flight

Published

January 1, 2014

Author(s)

Ian B. Spielman, Karina Jimenez-Garcia

Abstract

Ultracold atoms in optical lattices can realize nearly perfect analogs to condensed matter model systems without the complexity present in materials. In this chapter, we thoroughly describe our experimental characterization of the transition from superfluid (SF, for shallow optical lattices) to Mott insulator (MI, for deep optical lattices) using trapped ultracold bosonic atom in optical lattices. Our measurements are based on the time-of-flight (TOF) technique, where we focus on the atoms' momentum distribution and correlations therein. In this review, we discuss three main measurements: ({\it i}\,) the properties of the Mott state including the effects on non-zero, but small, tunneling ({\it ii}\,) the critical value at which an inhonmogeneous ensemble of systems fully departs the SF phase; and ({\it iii}\,) the state diagram describing a single harmonically trapped system as a function a characteristic density and lattice depth using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique to exclude inhomogeneous averaging.

Citation

Cambridge University Press in 2014

Publisher Info

Rey, A.M.; Satija, I.I.; Clark C.W., Cambridge, -1

Pub Type

Books

Keywords

insulator, Mott, superfluid, time-of-flight, transition

Citation

Spielman, I. and Jimenez-Garcia, K. (2014), The Mott Transition in a Bose Gas Measured Through Time of Flight, Rey, A.M.; Satija, I.I.; Clark C.W., Cambridge, -1 (Accessed May 10, 2024)