Dynamics and evaporation of defects in Mott clusters

Strongly interacting pairs of atoms in a lattice can form tighly bound dimers [1]. In turn, such dimers interact with each other via attractive nearest-neighbor interaction mediated by virtual (second order) hopping [2]. In the case of bosons, the dimers can form a stable, incompressible cluster corresponding to a finite-size Mott insulator. Unpaired bosons in such a cluster represent highly mobile defects. We study the dynamics of these defects in 1D clusters using analytical techniques and t-DMRG simulations. We discuss how the quasi-thermalization of the defects mediated by their collisions, followed by evaporation through the boundary of the cluster, can purify the Mott insulator.