Bath-induced band decay of a Hubbard lattice gas
Abstract
Dissipation is introduced to a strongly interacting ultracold bosonic gas in the Mott-insulator regime of a 3D spin-dependent optical lattice. A weakly interacting superfluid comprised of atoms in a state that does not experience the lattice potential acts as a dissipative bath coupled to the lattice atoms via collisions. Lattice atoms are excited to higher-energy bands via Bragg transitions, and the resulting bath-induced decay is measured using the atomic quasimomentum distribution. A competing but slower intrinsic decay mechanism arising from collisions between lattice atoms is also investigated. The measured bath-induced decay rate is compared with the predictions of a weakly interacting model with no free parameters. The presence of intrinsic decay, which cannot be accommodated within this framework, signals that strong interactions may play a central role in the lattice-atom dynamics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1401.5096,
title = {Bath-induced band decay of a Hubbard lattice gas},
author = {D. Chen and C. Meldgin and B. DeMarco},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.5096},
year = {2014}
}