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Title: Strongly Interacting Bosons in a Disordered Optical Lattice

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
; ; ; ; ;  [1]
  1. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)

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.

OSTI ID:
21180183
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 102, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.055301; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English