Excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional optical lattice

We investigate the low-lying excitations of a stack of weakly coupled two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates, which is formed by a one-dimensional optical lattice. In particular, we calculate the dispersion relations of the monopole and quadrupole modes, both for the ground state as well as for the case in which the system contains a vortex along the direction of the lasers creating the optical lattice. Our variational approach enables us to determine analytically the dispersion relations for an arbitrary number of atoms in every two-dimensional condensate and for an arbitrary momentum. We also discuss the feasibility of observing our results experimentally.