%0 Journal Article %J Physical Review A %D 2005 %T Sodium Bose-Einstein Condensates in an Optical Lattice %A K. Xu %A Y. Liu %A J. R. Abo-Shaeer %A T. Mukaiyama %A J. K. Chin %A D. E. Miller %A W. Ketterle %A Kevin M. Jones %A Eite Tiesinga %X 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. %B Physical Review A %V 72 %8 2005/10/10 %G eng %U http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0507288v1 %N 4 %! Phys. Rev. A %R 10.1103/PhysRevA.72.043604