Visibility of Cold Atomic Gases in Optical Lattices for Finite Temperatures

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytical method to interpret time-of-flight images of bosons in optical lattices, enabling temperature estimation in the Mott phase of cold atomic gases.

Contribution

It introduces a strong-coupling analytical calculation for visibility in time-of-flight images, offering a new way to measure temperature in cold atom experiments.

Findings

Analytical expression for visibility in time-of-flight images

Visibility as a thermometer for finite temperatures

Enhanced understanding of Mott phase properties

Abstract

In nearly all experiments with ultracold atoms time-of-flight pictures are the only data available. In this paper we present an analytical strong-coupling calculation for those time-of-flight pictures of bosons in an optical lattice in the Mott phase. This allows us to determine the visibility, which quantifies the contrast of peaks in the time-of-flight pictures, and we suggest how to use it as a thermometer.