Strongly correlated bosons on optical superlattices: Dynamics and relaxation in the superfluid and insulating regimes*

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of hard-core bosons (HCB's) on one-dimensional lattices. The dynamics is analyzed after a sudden switch-on or switch-off of a superlattice potential, which can bring the system into insulating or superfluid phases, respectively. A collapse and revival of the zero-momentum peak can be seen in the first case. We study in detail the relaxation of these integrable systems towards equilibrium. We show that after relaxation time averages of physical observables, like the momentum distribution function, can be predicted by means of a generalization of the Gibbs distribution. [M. Rigol, A. Muramatsu, and M. Olshanii, Phys. Rev. A 74, 053616 (2006).]