Mesoscopic Aspects of Strongly Interacting Cold Atoms
arXiv:0807.3173 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.79.174504
Abstract
Harmonically trapped lattice bosons with strong repulsive interactions exhibit a superfluid-Mott-insulator heterostructure in the form of a "wedding cake". We discuss the mesoscopic aspects of such a system within a one-dimensional scattering matrix approach and calculate the scattering properties of quasi-particles at a superfluid-Mott-insulator interface as an elementary building block to describe transport phenomena across such a boundary. We apply the formalism to determine the heat conductivity through a Mott layer, a quantity relevant to describe thermalization processes in the optical lattice setup. We identify a critical hopping below which the heat conductivity is strongly suppressed.
11 pages, 5 figures
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