Effects of higher-order energy bands and temperature on the bosonic Mott insulator in a periodically modulated lattice

Abstract

We show that a certain class of higher-order excitations in ultracold atoms experiments can be described by straightforward extension of the standard strong coupling approach in the coherent state path integral formalism. It is achieved by theoretical analysis of energy absorption spectroscopy in the three-dimensional system of strongly correlated bosons described by the Bose-Hubbard model. In particular, for unit filling, an explicit form of the single-particle Mott insulator Green function at finite temperatures is derived which goes beyond the standard Hubbard bands description. Moreover, for relevant densities, we calculated the energy absorption rate and performed thermometry on rubidium atomic cloud gas by using previously obtained experimental data. Within the local density approximation, we explain that in such systems the nature of absorption spectrum depends significantly on local chemical potential: (a) the crossover region between lobes is characterized by different types of particle-hole excitations from neighboring Mott lobes and (b) origin of higher-order energy excitations changes from hole type to particle type for higher bosonic densities.