Adiabatic loading of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a 3D optical lattice

Abstract

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