No Arabic abstract
Motivated by recent realizations of spin-1 NaRb mixtures in the experiments, here we investigate heteronuclear magnetism in the Mott-insulating regime. Different from the identical mixtures where the boson (fermion) statistics only admits even (odd) parity states from angular momentum composition, for heteronuclear atoms in principle all angular momentum states are allowed, which can give rise to new magnetic phases. Various magnetic phases can be developed over these degenerate spaces, however, the concrete symmetry breaking phases depend not only on the degree of degeneracy, but also the competitions from many-body interactions. We unveil these rich phases using the bosonic dynamical mean-field theory approach. These phases are characterized by various orders, including spontaneous magnetization order, spin magnitude order, singlet pairing order and nematic order, which may coexist, especially in the regime with odd parity. Finally we address the possible parameter regimes for observing these spin-ordered Mott phases.
This tutorial is a theoretical work, in which we study the physics of ultra-cold dipolar bosonic gases in optical lattices. Such gases consist of bosonic atoms or molecules that interact via dipolar forces, and that are cooled below the quantum degeneracy temperature, typically in the nK range. When such a degenerate quantum gas is loaded into an optical lattice produced by standing waves of laser light, new kinds of physical phenomena occur. These systems realize then extended Hubbard-type models, and can be brought to a strongly correlated regime. The physical properties of such gases, dominated by the long-range, anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, are discussed using the mean-field approximations, and exact Quantum Monte Carlo techniques (the Worm algorithm).
Motivated by recent experimental processes, we systemically investigate strongly correlated spin-1 ultracold bosons trapped in a three-dimensional optical lattice in the presence of an external magnetic field. Based on a recently developed bosonic dynamical mean-field theory (BDMFT), we map out complete phase diagrams of the system for both antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic interactions, where various phases are found as a result of the interplay of spin-dependent interaction and quadratic Zeeman energy. For antiferromagnetic interactions, the system demonstrates competing magnetic orders, including nematic, spin-singlet and ferromagnetic insulating phase, depending on longitudinal magnetization, whereas, for ferromagnetic case, a ferromagnetic-to-nematic-insulating phase transition is observed for small quadratic Zeeman energy, and the insulating phase demonstrates the nematic order for large Zeeman energy. Interestingly, at low magnetic field and finite temperature, we find an abnormal multi-step condensation of the strongly correlated superfluid, i.e. the critical condensing temperature of the $m_F=-1$ component with antiferromagnetic interactions demonstrates an increase with longitudinal magnetization, while, for ferromagnetic case, the Zeeman component $m_F = 0$ demonstrates a local minimum for the critical condensing temperature, in contrast to weakly interacting cases.
Since the discovery of topological insulators, many topological phases have been predicted and realized in a range of different systems, providing both fascinating physics and exciting opportunities for devices. And although new materials are being developed and explored all the time, the prospects for probing exotic topological phases would be greatly enhanced if they could be realized in systems that were easily tuned. The flexibility offered by ultracold atoms could provide such a platform. Here, we review the tools available for creating topological states using ultracold atoms in optical lattices, give an overview of the theoretical and experimental advances and provide an outlook towards realizing strongly correlated topological phases.
Over the last years the exciting developments in the field of ultracold atoms confined in optical lattices have led to numerous theoretical proposals devoted to the quantum simulation of problems e.g. known from condensed matter physics. Many of those ideas demand for experimental environments with non-cubic lattice geometries. In this paper we report on the implementation of a versatile three-beam lattice allowing for the generation of triangular as well as hexagonal optical lattices. As an important step the superfluid-Mott insulator (SF-MI) quantum phase transition has been observed and investigated in detail in this lattice geometry for the first time. In addition to this we study the physics of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in the presence of the triangular optical lattice potential, especially spin changing dynamics across the SF-MI transition. Our results suggest that below the SF-MI phase transition, a well-established mean-field model describes the observed data when renormalizing the spin-dependent interaction. Interestingly this opens new perspectives for a lattice driven tuning of a spin dynamics resonance occurring through the interplay of quadratic Zeeman effect and spin-dependent interaction. We finally discuss further lattice configurations which can be realized with our setup.
We demonstrate the experimental implementation of an optical lattice that allows for the generation of large homogeneous and tunable artificial magnetic fields with ultracold atoms. Using laser-assisted tunneling in a tilted optical potential we engineer spatially dependent complex tunneling amplitudes. Thereby atoms hopping in the lattice accumulate a phase shift equivalent to the Aharonov-Bohm phase of charged particles in a magnetic field. We determine the local distribution of fluxes through the observation of cyclotron orbits of the atoms on lattice plaquettes, showing that the system is described by the Hofstadter model. Furthermore, we show that for two atomic spin states with opposite magnetic moments, our system naturally realizes the time-reversal symmetric Hamiltonian underlying the quantum spin Hall effect, i.e., two different spin components experience opposite directions of the magnetic field.