TY - JOUR T1 - Sodium Bose-Einstein Condensates in an Optical Lattice JF - Physical Review A Y1 - 2005 A1 - K. Xu A1 - Y. Liu A1 - J. R. Abo-Shaeer A1 - T. Mukaiyama A1 - J. K. Chin A1 - D. E. Miller A1 - W. Ketterle A1 - Kevin M. Jones A1 - Eite Tiesinga AB - The phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator has been observed in a $^{23}$Na Bose-Einstein condensate. A dye laser detuned $\approx 5$nm red of the Na $3^2$S$ \to 3^2$P$_{1/2}$ transition was used to form the three dimensional optical lattice. The heating effects of the small detuning as well as the three-body decay processes constrained the timescale of the experiment. Certain lattice detunings were found to induce a large loss of atoms. These loss features were shown to be due to photoassociation of atoms to vibrational levels in the Na$_2$ $(1) ^3\Sigma_g^+$ state. VL - 72 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0507288v1 CP - 4 J1 - Phys. Rev. A U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.72.043604 ER -