Entanglement and the Mott transition in a rotating bosonic ring lattice

We use second- and fourth-order correlation functions accessible in time-of-flight images to investigate the effects of rotation on one-dimensional ultracold bosons confined to a ring lattice. There exists a critical rotation frequency at which the ground state of a weakly interacting and integer-filled atomic gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition of two states with different circulation. The formation of such a quantum superposition (“cat”) state is accompanied by the opening of a gap in the spectrum, and by a sudden rearrangement of the momentum distribution which lowers the threshold of the Mott insulator transition. We show that both the entangled character of the ground state and the enhancement of quantum correlations can be detected in the density-density correlations of the expanding cloud. Our studies demonstrate the usefulness of these correlations for identifying physics in cold atomic systems.