Interference of cold atoms released from an optical lattice

Abstract

We study interference of the cold atoms which are released out of the quasi–one-dimensional optical lattice, for the different initial states of the system. In particular, in the case of the Mott-insulator initial state, the atomic-density distribution is shown to exhibit a non-trivial interference pattern, similar to that observed for BEC in double-well potential in the experiment by Andrews et al. (Science 275 (1997) 637).