No Arabic abstract
We studied the appearance of Mott insulator domains of hard sphere bosons on quasi one-dimensional optical lattices when an harmonic trap was superimposed along the main axis of the system. Instead of the standard approximation represented by the Bose-Hubbard model, we described those arrangements by continuous Hamiltonians that depended on the same parameters as the experimental setups. We found that for a given trap the optical potential depth, $V_0$, needed to create a single connected Mott domain decreased with the number of atoms loaded on the lattice. If the confinement was large enough, it reached a minimum when, in absence of any optical lattice, the atom density at the center of the trap was the equivalent of one particle per optical well. For larger densities, the creation of that single domain proceeded via an intermediate shell structure in which Mott domains alternated with superfluid ones.
By means of diffusion Monte Carlo calculations, we investigated the quantum phase transition between a superfluid and a Mott insulator for a system of hard-sphere bosons in a quasi one-dimensional optical lattice. For this continuous hamiltonian, we studied how the stability limits of the Mott phase changed with the optical lattice depth and the transverse confinement width. A comparison of these results to those of a one-dimensional homogeneous Bose-Hubbard model indicates that this last model describes accurately the phase diagram only in the limit of deep lattices. For shallow ones, our results are comparable to those of the sine-Gordon model in its limit of application. We provide an estimate of the critical parameters when none of those models are realistic descriptions of a quasi one-dimensional optical lattice.
We calculated the phase diagram of a continuous system of hard spheres loaded in a quasi-one dimensional bichromatic optical lattice. The wavelengths of both lattice-defining lasers were chosen to model an incommensurate arrangement. Densities of one particle and half a particle per potential well were considered. Our results can be compared directly to those of the experimental system [Fallani et al. PRL, {bf 98} 130404 (2007)] from which our initial parameters were taken. The phase diagrams for both densities are significatively different to those obtained by describing the same experimental setup with a Bose-Hubbard model.
We experimentally realize Rydberg excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates of rubidium atoms loaded into quasi one-dimensional traps and in optical lattices. Our results for condensates expanded to different sizes in the one-dimensional trap agree well with the intuitive picture of a chain of Rydberg excitations. We also find that the Rydberg excitations in the optical lattice do not destroy the phase coherence of the condensate, and our results in that system agree with the picture of localized collective Rydberg excitations including nearest-neighbour blockade.
One-dimensional polar gases in deep optical lattices present a severely constrained dynamics due to the interplay between dipolar interactions, energy conservation, and finite bandwidth. The appearance of dynamically-bound nearest-neighbor dimers enhances the role of the $1/r^3$ dipolar tail, resulting, in the absence of external disorder, in quasi-localization via dimer clustering for very low densities and moderate dipole strengths. Furthermore, even weak dipoles allow for the formation of self-bound superfluid lattice droplets with a finite doping of mobile, but confined, holons. Our results, which can be extrapolated to other power-law interactions, are directly relevant for current and future lattice experiments with magnetic atoms and polar molecules.
We investigate the spin-2 chain model corresponding to the small hopping limit of the spin-2 Bose-Hubbard model using density-matrix renormalization-group and time-evolution techniques. We calculate both static correlation functions and the dynamic structure factor. The dynamic structure factor in the dimerized phase differs significantly between parameters near the SU(5)-symmetric point and those deeper in the phase where the dimerization is strong. In the former case, most of the spectral weight is concentrated in a single excitation line, while in the latter case, a broad excitation continuum shows up. For the trimerized phase, we find gapless excitations at momenta $k=pm2pi/3$ in agreement with previous results, although the visibility of these excitations in the dynamic spin response depends strongly on the specific parameters. We also consider parameters for specific atoms which may be relevant for future optical-lattice experiments.