Breakdown of adiabaticity when loading ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices

Realistic simulations of current ultra-cold atoms experiments in optical lattices show that the ramping up of the optical lattice is significantly nonadiabatic, implying that experimentally prepared Mott insulators are not really in the ground state of the atomic system. The nonadiabaticity is even larger in the presence of a secondary quasi-periodic lattice simulating “disorder”. Alternative ramping schemes are suggested that improve the adiabaticity when the disorder is not too large.