Commensurate-Incommensurate Transition of Cold Atoms in an Optical Lattice
Commensurate-Incommensurate Transition of Cold Atoms in an Optical Lattice
An atomic gas subject to a commensurate periodic potential generated by an optical lattice undergoes a superfluid-Mott insulator transition. Confining a strongly interacting gas to one dimension generates an instability where an arbitrary weak potential is sufficient to pin the atoms into the Mott state; here, we derive the corresponding …