2006/03/22 by T. Gericke, F. Gerbier, A. Widera +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09500340600777730
published as J. Mod. Opt. 54, 735 (2007)
arxiv created 2006/03/22 · arxiv updated 2014/03/28
We experimentally investigate the adiabatic loading of a Bose-Einstein condensate into an optical lattice potential. The generation of excitations during the ramp is detected by a corresponding decrease in the visibility of the interference pattern observed after free expansion of the cloud. We focus on the superfluid regime, where we show that the limiting time scale is related to the redistribution of atoms across the lattice by single-particle tunneling.