Imaging the Mott insulator shells by using atomic clock shifts.
Microwave spectroscopy was used to probe the superfluid-Mott insulator transition of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a three-dimensional optical lattice. By using density-dependent transition frequency shifts, we were able to spectroscopically distinguish sites with different occupation numbers and to directly image sites with occupation numbers from one to five, revealing the shell structure of the Mott insulator phase. We used this spectroscopy to determine the onsite interaction and lifetime for individual shells.
Campbell
Gretchen K
GK
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. gcampbel@mit.edu
Mun
Jongchul
J
Boyd
Micah
M
Medley
Patrick
P
Leanhardt
Aaron E
AE
Marcassa
Luis G
LG
Pritchard
David E
DE
Ketterle
Wolfgang
W