Condensed Matter Seminar

I will describe two sets of experiments using ultra cold atoms in optical lattices. In one, we accurately measure the condensate fraction in a 2D Bose-Hubbard system as a function of the lattice depth and compare to theory. In the other, we demonstrate a method of adiabatically dressing spin-dependent lattices, a technique that can in principle generate non-trivial sub-wavelength structure. Non-adiabatic spin-flip loss is one of the limiting processes in this lattice, and we measure spin-flip loss under a variety of conditions.