We study the ground state phases of Bose-Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional optical lattices with quantum Monte Carlo simulations using the Canonical Worm algorithm. Depending on the filling of bosons and fermions, and the on-site intra- and inter-species interaction, different kinds of incompressible and superfluid phases appear. On the compressible side, correlations between bosons and fermions can lead to a distinctive behavior of the bosonic superfluid density and the fermionic stiffness, as well as of the equal-time Green functions, which allow one to identify regions where the two species exhibit anticorrelated flow. We present here complete phase diagrams for these systems at different fillings and as a function of the interaction parameters.
We study the superfluid-Mott insulator transition of antiferromagnetic spin-1 bosons in an optical lattice described by a Bose-Hubbard model. Our variational study with the Gutzwiller-type trial wave function determines that the superfluid-Mott insulator transition is a first-order one at a part of the phase boundary curve, contrary to the spinless case. This first-order transition may be observed through an experiment, such as a Stern-Gerlach type, under a magnetic field.
We study the effects of interaction between bosons and fermions in a Bose-Fermi mixtures loaded in an optical lattice. We concentrate on the destruction of a bosonic Mott phase driven by repulsive interaction between bosons and fermions. Once the Mott phase is destroyed, the system enters a superfluid phase where the movements of bosons and fermions are correlated. We show that this phase has simultaneously correlations reminiscent of a conventional superfluid and of a pseudo-spin density wave order.
We study Mott insulator - superfluid transition in a two-band boson Hubbard model, which can be mapped onto a spin-1/2 XY model with spins coupled to an additional Ising degree of freedom. By using a modified mean field theory that include the effects of phase fluctuations, we show that the transition is first order at both zero and finite temperatures. On the Mott insulator side, there may be reentrance in phase transition. These features are consequences of the underlying transition between competing defect poor and defect rich phases. The relevance of the model and our results to supersolid…
We study the superfluid to Mott-insulator (SF-MI) transition of hardcore bosons in commensurate superlattices in two and three dimensions. We focus on the special case where the superlattice has period two and the system is at half filling. We obtain exact numerical results by using the stochastic series expansion (SSE) algorithm, and compute various properties of the system, such as the ground-state energy, the fraction of bosons in the zero-momentum mode, the superfluid density, and the compressibility. With finite-size scaling, we find the critical points of the phase transition. We also ex…
A dense Bose gas with hard-core interaction is considered in an optical lattice. We study the phase diagram in terms of a special mean-field theory that describes a Bose-Einstein condensate and a Mott insulator with a single particle per lattice site for zero as well as for non-zero temperatures. We calculate the densities, the excitation spectrum and the static structure factor for each of these phases.
We have investigated the superfluid properties of a ring of weakly interacting and degenerate 1D Bose gas at thermal equilibrium with a rotating vessel. The conventional definition of superfluidity predicts that the gas has a significant superfluid fraction only in the Bose condensed regime. In the opposite regime, it is found that a superfluid behaviour can still be identified when the probability distribution of the total momentum of the gas has a multi-peaked structure, revealing unambiguously the existence of `superfluid' supercurrent states that did not show up in the conventional definit…
The hardcore-Bose-Hubbard model with random chemical potential is investigated using quantum Monte Carlo simulation. We consider two cases of random distribution of the chemical potential: a uniformly random distribution and a correlated distribution. The temperature dependences of the superfluid density, the specific heat, and the correlation functions are calculated. If the distribution of the randomness is correlated, there exists an intermediate state, which can be thought of as a localized condensate state of bosons, between the superfluid state and the normal state.
Mott insulator to superfluid quenches have been used by recent experiments to generate exotic superfluid phases. While the final Hamiltonian following the sudden quench is that of a superfluid, it is not a priori clear how close the final state of the system approaches the ground state of the superfluid Hamiltonian. To understand the nature of the final state we calculate the temporal evolution of the momentum distribution following a Mott insulator to superfluid quench. Using the numerical infinite time-evolving block decimation approach and the analytical rotor model approximation we establi…
We study the phase diagram of ultracold bosons in an optical lattice near a Feshbach resonance. Depending on the boson density, the strength of the optical lattice potential and the detuning from resonance, the ground state can be a Mott insulator, a superfluid phase with both an atomic and a molecular condensate, or a superfluid phase with only a molecular condensate. Mott insulator to superfluid transitions can be induced either by decreasing the strength of the optical lattice potential or by varying the detuning from the Feshbach resonance. Quite generally, we find that for a commensurate …
The coexistence of superfluid and Mott insulator, due to the quadratic confinement potential in current optical lattice experiments, makes the accurate detection of the superfluid-Mott transition difficult. Studying alternative trapping potentials which are experimentally realizable and have a flatter center, we find that the transition can be better resolved, but at the cost of a more difficult tuning of the particle filling. When mapping out the phase diagram using local probes and the local density approximation we find that the smoother gradient of the parabolic trap is advantageous.
I study the influence of fermion-boson conversion near Feshbach resonances on Mott states of Cooper pairs and demonstrate possible invasion of superfluidity. The quantum dynamics of Fermi-Bose gases is studied using both an effective coupled $U(1)\otimes U(1)$ quantum rotor Hamiltonian and a coupled XXZ $\otimes$ XXZ spin Hamiltonian. I also point out two distinct branches of collective modes in superfluid states, one of which involves anti-symmetric phase oscillations in fermionic and bosonic channels and is {\em always} gapped because of fermion-boson conversion.
We prove the absence of a direct quantum phase transition between a superfluid and a Mott insulator in a bosonic system with generic, bounded disorder. We also prove compressibility of the system on the superfluid--insulator critical line and in its neighborhood. These conclusions follow from a general {\it theorem of inclusions} which states that for any transition in a disordered system one can always find rare regions of the competing phase on either side of the transition line. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the disordered Bose-Hubbard model show an even stronger result, important for…
We study the Bose-Hubbard model using the finite size density matrix renormalization group method. We obtain for the first time a complete phase diagram for a system in the presence of a harmonic trap and compare it with that of the homogeneous system. To realize the transition from the superfluid to the Mott insulator phase we investigate different experimental signatures of these phases in quantities such as momentum distribution, visibility, condensate fraction and the total number of bosons at a particular density. The relationships between the various experimental signatures and the phase…
Recent advances in cooling techniques make now possible the experimental study of quantum phase transitions, which are transitions near absolute zero temperature accessed by varying a control parameter. A paradigmatic example is the superfluid-Mott transition of interacting bosons on a periodic lattice. From the relativistic Ginzburg-Landau action of this superfluid-Mott transition we derive the elementary excitations of the bosonic system, which contain in the superfluid phase a gapped Higgs mode and a gappless Goldstone mode. We show that this energy spectrum is in good agreement with the av…
We consider a boundary between a Mott insulator and a superfluid region of a Bose-Hubbard model at unit filling. Initially both regions are decoupled and cooled to their respective ground states. We show that, after switching on a small tunneling rate between both regions, all particles of the Mott region migrate to the superfluid area. This migration takes place whenever the difference between the chemical potentials of both regions is less than the maximal energy of any eigenmode of the superfluid. We verify our results numerically with DMRG simulations and explain them analytically with a m…
We study the sweep through the quantum phase transition from the superfluid to the Mott state for the Bose-Hubbard model with a time-dependent tunneling rate $J(t)$. In the experimentally relevant case of exponential decay, $J(t)\propto e^{-γt}$, an adapted mean-field expansion for large fillings $n$ yields a scaling solution for the fluctuations. This enables us to analytically calculate the evolution of the number and phase variations (on-site) and correlations (off-site) for slow ($γ\llμ$), intermediate, and fast (non-adiabatic $γ\ggμ$) sweeps, where $μ$ is the chemical potential. Finally, …
Density order is usually a consequence of the competition between long-range and short-range interactions. Here we report a density ordered superfluid emergent from a homogeneous Mott insulator due to the competition between frustrations and local interactions. This transition is found in a Bose-Hubbard model on a frustrated triangle lattice with an extra pairing term. Further, we find a quantum phase transition between two different density ordered superfluids, which is beyond the Landau-Ginzburg paradigm. Across this transition, a U(1) symmetry is emergent, while the symmetry in each density…
We predict that a new superfluid phase, the incompressible excitonic superfluid (IESF), in the phase diagram of ultracold Bose atoms in $d>1$ dimensional optical lattices, which is caused by the spontaneous breaking of the symmetry of translation of the lattice. Within mean field theory, the critical temperature of the phase transition from this IESF to the normal fluid (NF) is calculated and the triple-critical point of the three phases is determined. We also investigate both configuration and gauge field fluctuations and show the IESF state is stable against these fluctuations. We expect thi…
We review the recent theoretical developments towards understanding the Mott phases and quantum phase transition of extended Bose-Hubbard models on lattices in two spatial dimensions . We focuss on the description of these systems using the dual vortex picture and point out the crucial role played by the geometry of underlying lattices in determining the nature of both the Mott phases and the quantum phase transitions. We also briefly compare the results of dual vortex theory with quantum Monte Carlo results.
We develop a Gutzwiller theory for the non-equilibrium steady states of a strongly-interacting photon fluid driven by a non-Markovian incoherent pump. In particular, we explore the collective excitation modes across the out-of-equilibrium Mott/superfluid transition, characterizing the diffusive Goldstone mode in the superfluid phase and the particle/hole excitations in the insulating one. Observable features in the pump-and-probe optical response of the system are highlighted. Our results appear as experimentally accessible to state-of-the-art circuit-QED devices and open the way for driven-di…
We discuss the zero-temperature hydrodynamics equations of bosonic and fermionic superfluids and their connection with generalized Gross-Pitaevskii and Ginzburg-Landau equations through a single superfluid nonlinear Schrodinger equation.
Physical properties of ideal Bose gas with the fractal dimensionality between D=2 and D=3 are theoretically investigated. Calculation shows that the characteristic features of the specific heat and the superfluid density of ideal Bose gas in fractal dimensions are strikingly similar to those of superfluid Helium-4 in porous media. This result indicates that the geometrical factor is dominant over mutual interactions in determining physical properties of Helium-4 in porous media.
A mechanism of Mott transitions in a Bose Hubbard model on a square lattice is studied, using a variational Monte Carlo method. Besides an onsite correlation factor, we introduce a four-body doublon-holon factor into the trial state, which considerably improves the variational energy and can appropriately describe a superfluid-insulator transition. Its essense consists in binding (and unbinding) of a doublon to a holon in a finite short range, identical with the cases of fermions. The features of this transition are qualitatively different from those of Brinkman-Rice-type transitions.
We study a linear ramp of the nearest-neighbor tunneling rate in the Bose-Hubbard model driving the system from the Mott insulator state into the superfluid phase. We employ the truncated Wigner approximation to simulate linear quenches of a uniform system in 1,2, and 3 dimensions, and in a harmonic trap in 3 dimensions. In all these setups the excitation energy decays like one over third root of the quench time. The -1/3 scaling arises from an impulse-adiabatic approximation - a variant of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism - describing a crossover from non-adiabatic to adiabatic evolution when the s…
The quantum phase transition from the Mott insulator state to the superfluid in the Bose-Hubbard model is investigated. We research one, two and three dimensional lattices in the truncated Wigner approximation. We compute both kinetic and potential energy and they turn out to have a power law behaviour as a function of the transition rate, with the power equal to 1/3. The same applies to the total energy in a system with a harmonic trap, which is usually present in the experimental set-up. These observations are in agreement with the experiment of [8], where such scalings were also observed an…
We study the phase diagram of a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensate and a two-component Fermi gas. In particular, we identify the regime where the homogeneous system becomes unstable against phase separation. We show that, under proper conditions, the phase separation phenomenon can be exploited as a robust probe of Fermi superfluid.
