Creation of a Molecular Condensate by Dynamically Melting a Mott Insulator

We propose the creation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate by loading an atomic condensate into an optical lattice and driving it into a Mott insulator with exactly two atoms per site. Molecules in a Mott insulator state are then created under well defined conditions by photoassociation with essentially unit efficiency. Finally, the Mott insulator is melted and a superfluid state of the molecules is created. We study the dynamics of this process and photoassociation of tightly trapped atoms.