No Arabic abstract
Experimental realizations of disorder in optical lattices generate a distribution of the Bose-Hubbard (BH) parameters, like on-site potentials, hopping strengths, and interaction energies. We analyze this distribution for bosons in a bichromatic quasi-periodic potential by determining the generalized Wannier functions and calculating the corresponding BH parameters. Using a local mean-field cluster analysis, we study the effect of the corresponding disorder on the phase diagrams. We find a substantial amount of disorder in the hopping strengths, which produces strong deviations from the phase diagram of the disordered BH model with solely random on-site potentials.
We investigate the temperature-dependent behavior emerging in the vicinity of the superfluid (SF) to Mott insulator (MI) transition of interacting bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice, described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The equilibrium phase diagram at finite temperatures is computed by means of the cluster mean-field theory (CMF) where the effect of non-local correlations is analyzed systematically by finite-size scaling of the cluster size. The phase diagram exhibits a rich structure including a transition and a crossover of the SF and MI phases respectively to a normal fluid (NF) state at finite temperature. In order to characterize these phases, and the NF transition and crossover scales, we calculate, in addition to the condensate amplitude, the superfluid fraction, sound velocity and compressibility. The phase boundaries obtained by CMF with finite-size scaling agree quantitatively with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results as well as with experiments. The von Neumann entanglement entropy of a cluster exhibits critical enhancement near the SF-MI quantum critical point (QCP). We also discuss the behavior of the transition lines near this QCP at the particle-hole symmetric point located at the tip of a Mott lobe as well as away from particle-hole symmetry.
Understanding the collective behavior of strongly correlated electrons in materials remains a central problem in many-particle quantum physics. A minimal description of these systems is provided by the disordered Fermi-Hubbard model (DFHM), which incorporates the interplay of motion in a disordered lattice with local inter-particle interactions. Despite its minimal elements, many dynamical properties of the DFHM are not well understood, owing to the complexity of systems combining out-of-equilibrium behavior, interactions, and disorder in higher spatial dimensions. Here, we study the relaxation dynamics of doubly occupied lattice sites in the three-dimensional (3D) DFHM using interaction-quench measurements on a quantum simulator composed of fermionic atoms confined in an optical lattice. In addition to observing the widely studied effect of disorder inhibiting relaxation, we find that the cooperation between strong interactions and disorder also leads to the emergence of a dynamical regime characterized by textit{disorder-enhanced} relaxation. To support these results, we develop an approximate numerical method and a phenomenological model that each capture the essential physics of the decay dynamics. Our results provide a theoretical framework for a previously inaccessible regime of the DFHM and demonstrate the ability of quantum simulators to enable understanding of complex many-body systems through minimal models.
We have studied the phase diagram of a quasi-two-dimensional interacting Bose gas at zero temperature in the presence of random potential created by laser speckles. The superfluid fraction and the fraction of particles with zero momentum are obtained within the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii theory and in diffusion Monte Carlo simulations. We find a transition from the superfluid to the insulating state, when the strength of the disorder grows. Estimations of the critical parameters are compared with the predictions of the percolation theory in the Thomas-Fermi approximation. Analytical expressions for the zero-momentum fraction and the superfluid fraction are derived in the limit of weak disorder and weak interactions within the framework of the Bogoliubov theory. Limits of validity of various approximations are discussed.
A single-particle mobility edge (SPME) marks a critical energy separating extended from localized states in a quantum system. In one-dimensional systems with uncorrelated disorder, a SPME cannot exist, since all single-particle states localize for arbitrarily weak disorder strengths. However, if correlations are present in the disorder potential, the localization transition can occur at a finite disorder strength and SPMEs become possible. In this work, we find experimental evidence for the existence of such a SPME in a one-dimensional quasi-periodic optical lattice. Specifically, we find a regime where extended and localized single-particle states coexist, in good agreement with theoretical simulations, which predict a SPME in this regime.
We present vortex solutions for the homogeneous two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate featuring dipolar atomic interactions, mapped out as a function of the dipolar interaction strength (relative to the contact interactions) and polarization direction. Stable vortex solutions arise in the regimes where the fully homogeneous system is stable to the phonon or roton instabilities. Close to these instabilities, the vortex profile differs significantly from that of a vortex in a nondipolar quantum gas, developing, for example, density ripples and an anisotropic core. Meanwhile, the vortex itself generates a mesoscopic dipolar potential which, at distance, scales as 1/r^2 and has an angular dependence which mimics the microscopic dipolar interaction.