Strongly interacting bosons in a disordered optical lattice.
We experimentally probe the properties of the disordered Bose-Hubbard model using an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a 3D disordered optical lattice. Controllable disorder is introduced using a fine-grained optical speckle field with features comparable in size to the lattice spacing along every lattice direction. A precision measurement of the disordering potential is used to compute the single-particle parameters of the system. To constrain theories of the disordered Bose Hubbard model, we have measured the change in condensate fraction as a function of disorder strength for several different ratios of tunneling to interaction energy. We observe disorder-induced, reversible suppression of condensate fraction for superfluid and coexisting superfluid-Mott-insulator phases.
White
M
M
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Pasienski
M
M
McKay
D
D
Zhou
S Q
SQ
Ceperley
D
D
Demarco
B
B