Light scattering from ultracold gases in disordered optical lattices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light scattering can distinguish different quantum phases of ultracold bosonic gases in disordered optical lattices, analyzing localization, superfluidity, and strong interactions at finite temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a method to differentiate phases in ultracold gases using off-resonant light scattering, supported by exact calculations of the partition function.

Findings

Light scattering reveals phase distinctions in ultracold gases.

Localization and superfluid phases exhibit different scattering signatures.

Strong interactions modify the scattering properties significantly.

Abstract

We consider a gas of bosons in a bichromatic optical lattice at finite temperatures. As the amplitude of the secondary lattice grows, the single-particles eigenstates become localized. We calculate the canonical partition function using exact methods for the noninteracting and strongly interacting limit and analyze the statistical properties of the superfluid phase, localized phase and the strongly interacting gas. We show that those phases may be distinguished in experiment using off-resonant light scattering.