Creation of a molecular condensate by dynamically melting a Mott-insulator

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to create a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate by transforming a Mott insulator state of atoms into a superfluid of molecules through controlled photoassociation and lattice melting.

Contribution

It introduces a novel process combining optical lattice manipulation and photoassociation to generate molecular BECs from atomic Mott insulators.

Findings

High efficiency of molecule creation via photoassociation.

Controlled transition from Mott insulator to superfluid state.

Detailed analysis of the dynamics involved in the process.

Abstract

We propose creation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by loading an atomic BEC into an optical lattice and driving it into a Mott insulator (MI) with exactly two atoms per site. Molecules in a MI state are then created under well defined conditions by photoassociation with essentially unit efficiency. Finally, the MI is melted and a superfluid state of the molecules is created. We study the dynamics of this process and photoassociation of tightly trapped atoms.