Light scattering by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

Journal Article · Thu Jan 14 23:00:00 EST 2010 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.81.013404· OSTI ID:21388746

Rist, Stefan ^[1]; Menotti, Chiara ^[2]; Morigi, Giovanna ^[1]

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1. Departament de Fisica, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra (Spain)
2. CNR-INFM BEC, and Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Trento, I-38050 Povo (Italy)

We investigate theoretically light scattering of photons by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice in the linear regime. A full quantum theory for the atom-photon interactions is developed as a function of the atomic state in the lattice along the Mott-insulator-superfluid phase transition, and the photonic-scattering cross section is evaluated as a function of the energy and of the direction of emission. The predictions of this theory are compared with the theoretical results of a recent work on Bragg scattering in time-of-flight measurements [A.M. Rey et al., Phys. Rev. A 72, 023407 (2005)]. We show that, when performing Bragg spectroscopy with light scattering, the photon recoil gives rise to an additional atomic site-to-site hopping, which can interfere with ordinary tunneling of matter waves and can significantly affect the photonic-scattering cross section.

• OSTI ID: 21388746
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Journal Name: Physical Review. A Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 81; ISSN 1050-2947; ISSN PLRAAN
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOM COLLISIONS
ATOMS
BOSONS
COLLISIONS
CROSS SECTIONS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EMISSION
FORECASTING
FUNCTIONS
LIGHT SCATTERING
MASSLESS PARTICLES
MATTER
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
PHOTON COLLISIONS
PHOTON-ATOM COLLISIONS
PHOTONS
SCATTERING
SPECTROSCOPY
SUPERFLUIDITY
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD
TUNNEL EFFECT