Hard-core bosons on optical superlattices: Dynamics and relaxation in the superfluid and insulating regimes

We study the ground-state properties and nonequilibrium dynamics of hard-core bosons confined in one-dimensional lattices in the presence of an additional periodic potential (superlattice) and a harmonic trap. The dynamics is analyzed after a sudden switch-on or switch-off of the superlattice potential, which can bring the system into insulating or superfluid phases, respectively. A collapse and revival of the zero-momentum peak can be seen in the first case. We study in detail the relaxation of these integrable systems towards equilibrium. We show how after relaxation time averages of physical observables, like the momentum distribution function, can be predicted by means of a generalization of the Gibbs distribution.