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We investigate different ground-state phases of attractive spin-imbalanced populations of fermions in 3-dimensional optical lattices. Detailed numerical calculations are performed using Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory to determine the ground-state properties systematically for different values of density, spin polarization and interaction strength. We first consider the high density and low polarization regime, in which the effect of the optical lattice is most evident. We then proceed to the low density and high polarization regime where the effects of the underlying lattice are less significant and the system begins to resemble a continuum Fermi gas. We explore the effects of density, polarization and interaction on the character of the phases in each regime and highlight the qualitative differences between the two regimes. In the high-density regime, the order is found to be of Larkin-Ovchinnikov type, linearly oriented with one characteristic wave vector but varying in its direction with the parameters. At lower densities the order parameter develops more structures involving multiple wave vectors.
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.
We numerically investigate, using the time evolving block decimation algorithm, the quantum transport of ultra-cold bosonic atoms in a double well optical lattice through slow and periodic modulation of the lattice parameters (intra- and inter-well tunneling, chemical potential, etc.). The transport of atoms does not depend on the rate of change of the parameters (as along as the change is slow) and can distribute atoms in optical lattices at the quantized level without involving external forces. The transport of atoms depends on the atom filling in each double well and the interaction between atoms. In the strongly interacting region, the bosonic atoms share the same transport properties as non-interacting fermions with quantized transport at the half filling and no atom transport at the integer filling. In the weakly interacting region, the number of the transported atoms is proportional to the atom filling. We show the signature of the quantum transport from the momentum distribution of atoms that can measured in the time of flight image. A semiclassical transport model is developed to explain the numerically observed transport of bosonic atoms in the non-interacting and strongly interacting limits. The scheme may serve as an quantized battery for atomtronics applications.
We present a detailed derivation of a multi-site mean-field theory (MSMFT) used to describe the Mott-insulator to superfluid transition of bosonic atoms in optical lattices. The approach is based on partitioning the lattice into small clusters which are decoupled by means of a mean field approximation. This approximation invokes local superfluid order parameters defined for each of the boundary sites of the cluster. The resulting MSMFT grand potential has a non-trivial topology as a function of the various order parameters. An understanding of this topology provides two different criteria for the determination of the Mott insulator superfluid phase boundaries. We apply this formalism to $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattices in one, two and three dimensions, and demonstrate the improvement in the estimation of the phase boundaries when MSMFT is utilized for increasingly larger clusters, with the best quantitative agreement found for $d=3$. The MSMFT is then used to examine a linear dimer chain in which the on-site energies within the dimer have an energy separation of $Delta$. This system has a complicated phase diagram within the parameter space of the model, with many distinct Mott phases separated by superfluid regions.
As the temperature of a many-body system approaches absolute zero, thermal fluctuations of observables cease and quantum fluctuations dominate. Competition between different energies, such as kinetic energy, interactions or thermodynamic potentials, can induce a quantum phase transition between distinct ground states. Near a continuous quantum phase transition, the many-body system is quantum critical, exhibiting scale invariant and universal collective behavior cite{Coleman05Nat, Sachdev99QPT}. Quantum criticality has been actively pursued in the study of a broad range of novel materials cite{vdMarel03Nat, Lohneysen07rmp, G08NatPhys, Sachdev08NatPhys}, and can invoke new insights beyond the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm of critical phenomena cite{Senthil04prb}. It remains a challenging task, however, to directly and quantitatively verify predictions of quantum criticality in a clean and controlled system. Here we report the observation of quantum critical behavior in a two-dimensional Bose gas in optical lattices near the vacuum-to-superfluid quantum phase transition. Based on textit{in situ} density measurements, we observe universal scaling of the equation of state at sufficiently low temperatures, locate the quantum critical point, and determine the critical exponents. The universal scaling laws also allow determination of thermodynamic observables. In particular, we observe a finite entropy per particle in the critical regime, which only weakly depends on the atomic interaction. Our experiment provides a prototypical method to study quantum criticality with ultracold atoms, and prepares the essential tools for further study on quantum critical dynamics.
We summarize recent theoretical results for the signatures of strongly correlated ultra-cold fermions in optical lattices. In particular, we focus on: collective mode calculations, where a sharp decrease in collective mode frequency is predicted at the onset of the Mott metal-insulator transition; and correlation functions at finite temperature, where we employ a new exact technique that applies the stochastic gauge technique with a Gaussian operator basis.