Precision measurements on a tunable Mott insulator of ultracold atoms

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Oct 21;107(17):175301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.175301. Epub 2011 Oct 18.

Abstract

We perform precision measurements on a Mott-insulator quantum state of ultracold atoms with tunable interactions. We probe the dependence of the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator transition on the interaction strength and explore the limits of the standard Bose-Hubbard model description. By tuning the on-site interaction energies to values comparable to the interband separation, we are able to quantitatively measure number-dependent shifts in the excitation spectrum caused by effective multibody interactions.