arXiv:1307.4060 · Physical Review Letters
Transport of a Bose Gas in 1D Disordered Lattices at the Fluid-Insulator Transition
Luca Tanzi, E. Lucioni, Saptarishi Chaudhuri, Lorenzo Gori, Avinash Kumar, Chiara D’Errico, M. Inguscio, Giovanni Carlo Modugno
Abstract
We investigate the momentum-dependent transport of 1D quasicondensates in quasiperiodic optical lattices. We observe a sharp crossover from a weakly dissipative regime to a strongly unstable one at a disorder-dependent critical momentum. In the limit of nondisordered lattices the observations suggest a contribution of quantum phase slips to the dissipation. We identify a set of critical disorder and interaction strengths for which such critical momentum vanishes, separating a fluid regime from an insulating one. We relate our observation to the predicted zero-temperature superfluid-Bose glass transition.