Abstract
We investigate the dynamics of Mott-insulating regions of a trapped bosonic gas as the interaction strength is changed linearly with time. The bosonic gas considered is loaded into an optical lattice and confined to a parabolic trapping potential. Two situations are addressed: the formation of Mott domains in a superfluid gas as the interaction is increased and their melting as the interaction strength is lowered. In the first case, depending on the local filling, Mott-insulating barriers can develop and hinder the density and energy transport throughout the system. In the second case, the density and local energy adjust rapidly, whereas long-range correlations require a longer time to settle. For both cases, we consider the time evolution of various observables: the local density and energy and their respective currents, the local compressibility, the local excess energy, the heat, and single-particle correlators. The evolution of these observables is obtained using the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group technique and comparisons with time evolutions done within the Gutzwiller approximation are provided.