Density–Density Correlation Spectra of Ultracold Bosonic Gas Released from a Deep 1D Optical Lattice

Abstract

Density–density correlation analysis is a convenient diagnostic tool to reveal the hidden order in the strongly correlated phases of ultracold atoms. We report on a study of the density–density correlations of ultracold bosonic atoms which were initially prepared in a Mott insulator (MI) state in one-dimensional optical lattices. For the atomic gases released from the deep optical lattice, we extracted the normalized density–density correlation function from the atomic density distributions of freely expanded atomic clouds. Periodic bunching peaks were observed in the density–density correlation spectra, as in the case of higher-dimensional lattices. Treating the bosonic gas within each lattice well as a subcondensate without quantum tunneling, we simulated the post-expansion density distribution along the direction of the 1D lattice, and the calculated density–density correlation spectra agreed with our experimental observations.

Keywords

• density–density correlation
• Mott insulator
• 1D optical lattices