No Arabic abstract
Motivated by recent experimental observations (C.V. Parker {it et al.}, Nature Physics, {bf 9}, 769 (2013)), we analyze the stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a one-dimensional lattice subjected to periodic shaking. In such a system there is no thermodynamic ground state, but there may be a long-lived steady-state, described as an eigenstate of a Floquet Hamiltonian. We calculate how scattering processes lead to a decay of the Floquet state. We map out the phase diagram of the system and find regions where the BEC is stable and regions where the BEC is unstable against atomic collisions. We show that Parker et al. perform their experiment in the stable region, which accounts for the long life-time of the condensate ($sim$ 1 second). We also estimate the scattering rate of the bosons in the region where the BEC is unstable.
We study the ground-state behavior of a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in a Raman-laser-assisted one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice potential forming a multilayer system. We find that, such system can be described by an effective model with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) of pseudospin $(N-1)/2$, where $N$ is the number of layers. Due to the intricate interplay between atomic interactions, SOC and laser-assisted tunnelings, the ground-state phase diagrams generally consist of three phases -- a stripe, a plane wave and a normal phase with zero-momentum, touching at a quantum tricritical point. More important, even though the single-particle states only minimize at zero-momentum for odd $N$, the many-body ground states may still develop finite momenta. The underlying mechanisms are elucidated. Our results provide an alternative way to realize an effective spin-orbit coupling of Bose gas with the Raman-laser-assisted optical lattice, and would also be beneficial to the studies on SOC effects in spinor Bose systems with large spin.
Motivated by recent experiments, we analyse the stability of a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) loaded in a periodically driven one-dimensional optical lattice. Such periodically driven systems do not have a thermodynamic ground state, but may have a long-lived steady state which is an eigenstate of a Floquet Hamiltonian. We explore collisional instabilities of the Floquet ground state which transfer energy into the transverse modes. We calculate decay rates, finding that the lifetime scales as the inverse square of the scattering length and inverse of the peak three- dimensional density. These rates can be controlled by adding additional transverse potentials.
We study the response of ultracold atoms to a weak force in the presence of a temporally strongly modulated optical lattice potential. It is experimentally demonstrated that the strong ac-driving allows for a tailoring of the mobility of a dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensate with the atoms moving ballistically either along or against the direction of the applied force. Our results are in agreement with a theoretical analysis of the Floquet spectrum of a model system, thus revealing the existence of diabatic Floquet bands in the atoms band spectra and highlighting their role in the non-equilibrium transport of the atoms.
The recent experimental condensation of ultracold atoms in a triangular optical lattice with negative effective tunneling energies paves the way to study frustrated systems in a controlled environment. Here, we explore the critical behavior of the chiral phase transition in such a frustrated lattice in three dimensions. We represent the low-energy action of the lattice system as a two-component Bose gas corresponding to the two minima of the dispersion. The contact repulsion between the bosons separates into intra- and inter-component interactions, referred to as $V_{0}$ and $V_{12}$, respectively. We first employ a Huang-Yang-Luttinger approximation of the free energy. For $V_{12}/V_{0} = 2$, which corresponds to the bare interaction, this approach suggests a first order phase transition, at which both the U$(1)$ symmetry of condensation and the $mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry of the emergent chiral order are broken simultaneously. Furthermore, we perform a renormalization group calculation at one-loop order. We demonstrate that the coupling regime $0<V_{12}/V_0leq1$ shares the critical behavior of the Heisenberg fixed point at $V_{12}/V_{0}=1$. For $V_{12}/V_0>1$ we show that $V_{0}$ flows to a negative value, while $V_{12}$ increases and remains positive. This results in a breakdown of the effective quartic field theory due to a cubic anisotropy, and again suggests a discontinuous phase transition.
The realization of artificial gauge fields and spin-orbit coupling for ultra-cold quantum gases promises new insight into paradigm solid state systems. Here we experimentally probe the dispersion relation of a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a translating optical lattice by observing its dynamical stability, and develop an effective band structure that provides a theoretical understanding of the locations of the band edges. This system presents exciting new opportunities for engineering condensed-matter analogs using the flexible toolbox of ultra-cold quantum gases.