Spatial Dynamics in Three Dimensional Lattice Confined Spinor Gases

We present an experimental study of spatial distributions after nonequilibrium quantum quenches across superfluid to Mott insulator phase transitions in three-dimensional ultracold gases using standard imaging techniques.  Using spin mixing oscillations we are able to indirectly determine the spatial distributions of our system.  This indirect method can be applied to other atomic species and may be helpful to study spatial dynamics of three dimensional lattice systems as lattice site-resolved imaging in such systems is still difficult to implement.  Our results indicate that during these quench sequences atoms undergo complex spatial dynamics while redistributing within a harmonic trap and suggest spatial distributions reach an equilibrium value when the lattice quench speed is sufficiently slow to ensure the atoms initially located in the trap center have enough time to move towards the trap boundaries and equilibrate.  The extracted spatial distributions therefore have a strong dependence on the lattice quench speed.  Our data also confirm that number distributions can be manipulated by properly designing quantum quench sequences, which may have important applications in attaining different many-body quantum phases.