Momentum dependent optical lattice induced by an artificial gauge potential

Abstract

We propose an experimentally feasible method to generate a one-dimensional optical lattice potential in an ultracold Bose gas system that depends on the transverse momentum of the atoms. The optical lattice is induced by the artificial gauge potential generated by a periodically driven multilaser Raman process. We study the many-body Bose-Hubbard model in an effective 1D case and show that the superfluid–Mott-insulator transition can be controlled via tuning the transverse momentum of the atomic gas. Such a feature enables us to control the phase of the quantum gas in the longitudinal direction by changing its transverse motional state. We examine our prediction via a strong-coupling expansion to an effective 1D Bose-Hubbard model and a quantum Monte Carlo calculation and discuss possible applications.