Bragg spectroscopy of strongly correlated bosons in optical lattices

Using inelastic scattering of light (Bragg spectroscopy), we study the lowenergy
excitations of strongly correlated phases of ultracold bosons on the cross-over
from correlated 1D superfluids to Mott insulators. As it is commonly performed in
solid-state physics, the use of such a probe allows us to extract important information
about the atomic many-body state. In particular we show that we can extract information
about the dynamical structure factor S(q,?) and about the one-particle spectral
function A(q,?) from the Bragg spectra. This technique could be extended to study
more exotic correlated phases of ultracold atoms.