Beyond Artifcial Graphene with Ultracold Fermions in a Tunable-Geometry Optical Lattice

Ultracold fermions in optical lattices offer the possibility to simulate the behavior of solids and explore regimes, which are not accessible in current materials. We have created an articifal graphene-like system and study how it can be driven from the usual Dirac-metal state to various insulating states (including the first implementation of a 2D Mott-insulator of fermions) by changing interactions, on-site energies or the tunneling structure. We present recent results on the behavior of static and dynamic observables in insulating regimes.