Bragg spectroscopy of strongly correlated bosons in optical lattices

Using inelastic scattering of light (Bragg spectroscopy), we study the lowenergyexcitations of strongly correlated phases of ultracold bosons on the cross-overfrom correlated 1D superfluids to Mott insulators. As it is commonly performed insolid-state physics, the use of such a probe allows us to extract important informationabout the atomic many-body state. In particular we show that we can extract informationabout the dynamical structure factor S(q,?) and about the one-particle spectralfunction A(q,?) from the Bragg spectra. This technique could be extended to studymore exotic correlated phases of ultracold atoms.