We study Bragg spectroscopy of strongly interacting one-dimensional bosons loaded in an optical lattice plus an additional parabolic potential. We calculate the dynamic structure factor by using Monte Carlo simulations for the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, exact diagonalizations and the results of a recently introduced extended fermionization model. We find that, due to the system’s inhomogeneity, the excitation spectrum exhibits a multibranched structure, whose origin is related to the presence of superfluid regions with different densities in the atomic distribution. We thus suggest that Bragg spectroscopy in the linear regime can be used as an experimental tool to unveil the shell structure of alternating Mott insulator and superfluid phases characteristic of trapped bosons.

• Received 9 February 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.74.013601