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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Phases of a two-dimensional bose gas in an optical lattice
K Jiménez-García1, R L Compton, Y-J Lin
1Joint Quantum Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and University of Maryland, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20899, USA.
Abstract:
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices realize simple condensed matter models. We create an ensemble of ≈60 harmonically trapped 2D Bose-Hubbard systems from a 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice and use a magnetic resonance imaging approach to select a few 2D systems for study, thereby eliminating ensemble averaging. Our identification of the transition from superfluid to Mott insulator, as a function of both atom density and lattice depth, is in excellent agreement with a universal state diagram [M. Rigol, Phys. Rev. A 79 053605 (2009)] suitable for our trapped system. In agreement with theory, our data suggest a failure of the local density approximation in the transition region.
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