Dynamically Generated Double Occupancy as a Probe of Cold Atom Systems

The experimental investigation of quantum phases in optical lattice systems provides major challenges. Recently, dynamical generation of double occupancy via modulation of the hopping amplitude t has been used to characterize the strongly correlated phase of fermionic atoms. Here, we want to validate this experimental technique with a theoretical study of the driven Hubbard model using analytic methods. We find that conclusive evidence for a Mott phase can be inferred from such a measurement, provided that sufficiently low temperatures kT<<t can be reached.