Heavily Damped Motion of One-Dimensional Bose Gases in an Optical Lattice

We study the dynamics of strongly correlated one-dimensional Bose gases in a combined harmonic and optical lattice potential subjected to sudden displacement of the confining potential. Using the time-evolving block decimation method, we perform a first-principles quantum many-body simulation of the experiment of Fertig {it et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf 94}, 120403 (2005)] across different values of the lattice depth ranging from the superfluid to the Mott insulator regimes. We find good quantitative agreement with this experiment: the damping of the dipole oscillations is significant even for shallow lattices, and the motion becomes overdamped with increasing lattice depth as observed. We show that the transition to overdamping is attributed to the decay of superfluid flow accelerated by quantum fluctuations, which occurs well before the emergence of Mott insulator domains.

Creating a supersolid in one-dimensional Bose mixtures

We identify a one-dimensional supersolid phase in a binary mixture of near-hardcore bosons with weak, local inter-species repulsion. We find realistic conditions under which such a phase, defined here as the coexistence of quasi-superfluidity and quasi-charge density wave order, can be produced and observed in finite ultra-cold atom systems in a harmonic trap. Our analysis is based on Luttinger liquid theory supported with numerical calculations using the time-evolving block decimation method. Clear experimental signatures of these two orders can be found, respectively, in time-of-flight interference patterns, and the structure factor S(k) derived from density correlations.

Experimentally accessible reentrant phase transitions in double-well optical lattices

We study the quantum phases of bosons confined in a combined potential of a one-dimensional double-well optical lattice and a parabolic trap. We apply the time-evolving block decimation method to the corresponding two-legged Bose-Hubbard model. In the absence of a parabolic trap, the system of bosons in the double-well optical lattice exhibits a reentrant quantum phase transition between Mott insulator and superfluid phases at unit filling as the tilt of the double-wells is increased. We show that the reentrant phase transition occurs also in the presence of a parabolic trap and suggest that it can be detected in experiments by measuring the matter-wave interference pattern.