Excitations in disordered bosonic optical lattices

Spectral excitations of ultracold gases of bosonic atoms trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices with disorder are investigated by means of the variational cluster approach applied to the Bose-Hubbard model. Qualitatively different disorder distributions typically employed in experiments are considered. The computed spectra exhibit a strong dependence on the shape of the disorder distribution and the disorder strength. We compare alternative results for the Mott gap obtained from its formal definition and from the minimum peak distance, which is the quantity available from experiments.