Light scattering by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

Year: 2010

Authors: Rist S., Menotti C., Morigi G.

Autors Affiliation: Departament de Física, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193 Bellaterra, Spain;
CNR-INFM BEC, and Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’ di Trento, I-38050 Povo, Italy;
Theoretische Physik, Universität des Saarlandes, D-66041 Saarbruecken, Germany

Abstract: We investigate theoretically light scattering of photons by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice in the linear regime. A full quantum theory for the atom-photon interactions is developed as a function of the atomic state in the lattice along the Mott-insulator-superfluid phase transition, and the photonic-scattering cross section is evaluated as a function of the energy and of the direction of emission. The predictions of this theory are compared with the theoretical results of a recent work on Bragg scattering in time-of-flight measurements [A.M. Rey et al., Phys. Rev. A 72, 023407 (2005)]. We show that, when performing Bragg spectroscopy with light scattering, the photon recoil gives rise to an additional atomic site-to-site hopping, which can interfere with ordinary tunneling of matter waves and can significantly affect the photonic-scattering cross section.

Journal/Review: PHYSICAL REVIEW A

Volume: 81 (1)      Pages from: 013404  to: 013404

More Information: The authors acknowledge Immanuel Bloch, Iacopo Carusotto, Igor Mekhov, Wolfgang Schleich, and Stefano Zippilli for stimulating discussions and helpful comments. This work was supported by the European Commission (EMALI, MRTN-CT-2006-035369; Integrated Project SCALA, Contract No. 015714), European Science Foundation (EURO-QUAM \”CMMC\”), and Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (Consolider-Ingenio 2010 QOIT, CSD2006-00019; QNLP, FIS2007-66944; Ramon-y-Cajal; Accion Integrada HU2007-0013). G. M. is supported by the DFG (German Research Council) with a Heisenberg professorship. C. M. thanks ICFO-The Institut for Photonic Sciences in Barcelona for hospitality during the period when this work was started.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.81.013404

Citations: 26
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