Matter-wave scattering from strongly interacting bosons in an optical lattice

Abstract

We study the scattering of a matter-wave from an interacting system of bosons in an optical lattice, focusing on the strong-interaction regime. Analytical expressions for the many-body scattering cross section are derived from a strong-coupling expansion and a site-decoupling mean-field approximation, and compared to numerically obtained exact results. In the thermodynamic limit, we find a non-vanishing inelastic cross section throughout the Mott insulating regime, which decays quadratically as a function of the boson-boson interaction.