Inelastic light scattering to probe strongly correlated bosons in optical lattices

Abstract

We have used inelastic light scattering to study correlated phases of an array of one-dimensional interacting Bose gases. In the linear response regime, the observed spectra are proportional to the dynamic structure factor. In particular we have investigated the superfluid to Mott insulator crossover loading the one-dimensional gases in an optical lattice and monitoring the appearance of an energy gap due to finite particle-hole excitation energy. We attribute the low frequency side of the spectra to the presence of some superfluid and normal phase fraction between the Mott insulator regions with different fillings produced in the inhomogeneous systems. In the Mott phase we also investigated excitations to higher excited bands of the optical lattice, the spectra obtained in this case being connected to the single particle spectral function. In one-dimensional systems the effect of thermal fluctuations and interactions is enhanced by the reduced dimensionality showing up in the dynamic structure factor. We measured the dynamic structure factor of an array of one-dimensional bosonic gases pointing out the effect of temperature-induced phase fluctuations in reducing the coherence length of the system.