Probing the Superfluid - Mott Insulating Shell Structure of Cold Atoms by Parametric Excitations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how parametric excitations can be used to probe the coexistence of Mott insulator and superfluid phases in ultracold Bose atoms within optical lattices, providing a method to detect and analyze these domains.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental approach using energy absorption dependence on modulation frequency to identify and characterize Mott insulator and superfluid coexistence in cold atom systems.

Findings

Energy absorption peaks reveal Mott insulator and superfluid domains.

Parametric excitation dependence distinguishes different phases.

Method offers a new way to study phase coexistence in optical lattices.

Abstract

We study the effect of parametric excitations on systems of confined ultracold Bose atoms in periodically modulated optical lattices. In the regime where Mott insulating and Superfluid domains coexist, we show that the dependence of the energy absorbed by the system on the frequency of the modulation serves as an experimental probe for the existence and properties of Mott insulating-Superfluid domains.