title: Strongly interacting bosons in a disordered optical lattice.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: White
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pasienski
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McKay
authors.forename: S Q
authors.initials: SQ
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ceperley
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Demarco