No Arabic abstract
We present an in-depth many-body investigation of the so-called mesoscopic molecular ions that can build-up when an ion is immersed into an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in one dimension. To this end, we employ the Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree method for Mixtures of ultracold bosonic species for solving the underlying many-body Schrodinger equation. This enables us to unravel the actual structure of such massive charged molecules from a microscopic perspective. Laying out their phase diagram with respect to atom number and interatomic interaction strength, we determine the maximal number of atoms bound to the ion and reveal spatial densities and molecular properties. Interestingly, we observe a strong interaction-induced localization, especially for the ion, that we explain by the generation of a large effective mass, similarly to ions in liquid Helium. Finally, we predict the dynamical response of the ion to small perturbations. Our results provide clear evidence for the importance of quantum correlations, as we demonstrate by benchmarking them with wave function ansatz classes employed in the literature.
We show that a two-component mixture of a few repulsively interacting ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional trap possesses very different quantum regimes and that the crossover between them can be induced by tuning the interactions in one of the species. In the composite fermionization regime, where the interactions between both components are large, none of the species show large occupation of any natural orbital. Our results show that by increasing the interaction in one of the species, one can reach the phase-separated regime. In this regime, the weakly interacting component stays at the center of the trap and becomes almost fully phase coherent, while the strongly interacting component is displaced to the edges of the trap. The crossover is sharp, as observed in the in the energy and the in the largest occupation of a natural orbital of the weakly interacting species. Such a transition is a purely mesoscopic effect which disappears for large atom numbers.
We propose and theoretically investigate a hybrid system composed of a crystal of trapped ions coupled to a cloud of ultracold fermions. The ions form a periodic lattice and induce a band structure in the atoms. This system combines the advantages of scalability and tunability of ultracold atomic systems with the high fidelity operations and detection offered by trapped ion systems. It also features close analogies to natural solid-state systems, as the atomic degrees of freedom couple to phonons of the ion lattice, thereby emulating a solid-state system. Starting from the microscopic many-body Hamiltonian, we derive the low energy Hamiltonian including the atomic band structure and give an expression for the atom-phonon coupling. We discuss possible experimental implementations such as a Peierls-like transition into a period-doubled dimerized state.
We explore the quantum dynamics of a one-dimensional trapped ultracold ensemble of bosonic atoms triggered by the sudden creation of a single ion. The numerical simulations are performed by means of the ab initio multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons which takes into account all correlations. The dynamics is analyzed via a cluster expansion approach, adapted to bosonic systems of fixed particle number, which provides a comprehensive understanding of the occurring many-body processes. After a transient during which the atomic ensemble separates into fractions which are unbound and bound with respect to the ion, we observe an oscillation in the atomic density which we attribute to the additional length and energy scale induced by the attractive long-range atom-ion interaction. This oscillation is shown to be the main source of spatial coherence and population transfer between the bound and the unbound atomic fraction. Moreover, the dynamics exhibits collapse and revival behavior caused by the dynamical build-up of two-particle correlations demonstrating that a beyond mean-field description is indispensable.
We consider the non-equilibrium orbital dynamics of spin-polarized ultracold fermions in the first excited band of an optical lattice. A specific lattice depth and filling configuration is designed to allow the $p_x$ and $p_y$ excited orbital degrees of freedom to act as a pseudo-spin. Starting from the full Hamiltonian for p-wave interactions in a periodic potential, we derive an extended Hubbard-type model that describes the anisotropic lattice dynamics of the excited orbitals at low energy. We then show how dispersion engineering can provide a viable route to realizing collective behavior driven by p-wave interactions. In particular, Bragg dressing and lattice depth can reduce single-particle dispersion rates, such that a collective many-body gap is opened with only moderate Feshbach enhancement of p-wave interactions. Physical insight into the emergent gap-protected collective dynamics is gained by projecting the Hamiltonian into the Dicke manifold, yielding a one-axis twisting model for the orbital pseudo-spin that can be probed using conventional Ramsey-style interferometry. Experimentally realistic protocols to prepare and measure the many-body dynamics are discussed, including the effects of band relaxation, particle loss, spin-orbit coupling, and doping.
We present a proposal for controlling the conversion of ultracold atoms into molecules by fixing the phase difference between two oscillating magnetic fields. The scheme is based on the use of a magnetic Feshbach resonance with a field modulation that incorporates terms oscillating with frequencies corresponding to the main resonance and one of the subharmonics. The interference between the two association processes activated by the oscillating terms is controlled via the phase difference. As a result, significant increase or decrease of the effective interaction strength can be achieved. The realization of the proposal is feasible under standard technical conditions. In particular, the method is found to be robust against the effect of the sources of decoherence present in the practical setup. The applicability of the approach to deal with quadratic terms in the field modulation is discussed.