Light scattering by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

Abstract

We investigate theoretically light scattering of photons by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice in the linear regime. A full quantum theory for the atom-photon interactions is developed as a function of the atomic state in the lattice along the Mott-insulator -- superfluid phase transition, and the photonic scattering cross section is evaluated as a function of the energy and of the direction of emission. The predictions of this theory are compared with the theoretical results of a recent work on Bragg scattering in time-of-flight measurements [A.M. Rey, {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 72}, 023407 (2005)]. We show that, when performing Bragg spectroscopy with light scattering, the photon recoil gives rise to an additional atomic site to site hopping, which can interfere with ordinary tunneling of matter waves and can significantly affect the photonic scattering cross section.