Mixtures of strongly interacting bosons in optical lattices
P. Buonsante, S. M. Giampaolo, F. Illuminati, V. Penna, A. Vezzani
备注：
10 pages, 3 figures; some changes in the text and abstract have been introduced; coherence now given in terms of visibility; a couple of new reference added
We investigate the properties of strongly interacting heteronuclear boson-boson mixtures loaded in realistic optical lattices, with particular emphasis on the physics of interfaces. In particular, we numerically reproduce the recent experimental observation that the addition of a small fraction of K induces a significant loss of coherence in Rb, providing a simple explanation. We then investigate the robustness against the inhomogeneity typical of realistic experimental realizations of the glassy quantum emulsions recently predicted to occur in strongly interacting boson-boson mixtures on ideal homogeneous lattices.
Mixing-demixing transitions in one-dimensional mixtures of fermions and bosons are numerically investigated. With Monte Carlo simulations, we searched the transitions by changing various parameters such as number densities of each component, fermion-boson interactions, boson-boson interactions, and hopping energies. In most cases we found clear evidences of the mixing-demixing transitions. We also identified the roles of each microscopic parameter in the transitions.
We numerically investigated Mott transitions and mixing-demixing transitions in one-dimensional boson-fermion mixtures at a commensurate filling. The mixing-demixing transition occurred in a qualitatively similar manner to the incommensurate filling case. We also found the Mott insulator phase appeared in both the mixing and the demixing states as the fermion-boson interaction or the boson-boson interaction increased. Phase diagrams were obtained in the interaction parameter space.
We numerically investigated the mixing-demixing transition of the boson-fermion mixture on a 1D lattice at an incommensurate filling with the fermion density being kept below the boson density. The phase diagram we obtained suggested that the decrease of the number of the fermions drove the system into the demixing phase.
We study mixtures of spinless bosons and not spin-polarized fermions loaded in two dimensional optical lattices. We approach the problem of the ground state stability within the framework of the linear response theory; by the mean of an iterative procedure, we are able to obtain a relation for the dependence of boson-boson effective interaction on the absolute temperature of the sample. Proceeding from such a formula, we write down analyitical expressions for Supersolid (SS) and Phase Separation (PS) transition temperatures, and plot the phase diagrams.
We introduce an inhomogeneous bosonic mixture composed of two kinds of hard-core and semi-hard-core bosons with different nilpotency conditions and demonstrate that in contrast with the standard hard-core Bose-Hubbard model, our bosonic mixture with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor interactions on a square lattice develops the checkerboard supersolid phase characterized by the simultaneous superfluid and checkerboard solid orders. Our bosonic mixture is created from a two-orbital Bose-Hubbard model including two kinds of bosons: a single-orbital boson and a two-orbital boson. By mapping the …
Mixtures of cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices undergo phase separations on different length scales with increasing inter-species repulsion. As a general rule, the stronger the intra-species interactions, the shorter is this length scale. The wealth of phenomena is documented by illustrative examples on both superfluids and Mott-insulators.
We study fermionic superfluidity in a boson-single-species-fermion cold atom mixture. We argue that apart from the standard p-wave fermion pairing mediated by the phonon field of the boson gas, the system also exhibits s-wave pairing with the anomalous correlator being an odd function of time or frequency. We show that such a superfluid phase can have a much higher transition temperature than the p-wave and may exist for sufficiently strong couplings between fermions and bosons. These conditions for odd-frequency pairing are favorable close to the value of the coupling at which the mixture pha…
A mixture of two types of hard-sphere bosons in a disk-shaped harmonic trap is studied through path-integral quantum Monte Carlo simulation at low temperature. We find that the system can undergo a phase transition to break the spatial symmetry of the model Hamiltonian when some of the model parameters are varied. The nature of such a phase transition is analyzed through the particle distributions and angular correlation functions. Comparisons are made between our calculations and the available mean-field results on similar models. Possible future experiments are suggested to verify our findin…
We consider strongly interacting boson-boson mixtures on one-dimensional lattices and, by adopting a qualitative mean-field approach, investigate their quantum phases as the interspecies repulsion is increased. In particular, we analyze the low-energy "quantum emulsion" metastable states occurring at large values of the interspecies interaction, which are expected to prevent the system from reaching its true ground state. We argue a significant decrease in the visibility of the time-of-flight images in the case of these spontaneously disordered states.
By minimizing the coupled mean-field energy functionals, we investigate the ground-state properties of a rotating atomic boson-fermion mixture in a two-dimensional parabolic trap. At high angular frequencies in the mean-field-lowest-Landau-level regime, quantized vortices enter the bosonic condensate, and a finite number of degenerate fermions form the maximum-density-droplet state. As the boson-fermion coupling constant increases, the maximum density droplet develops into a lower-density state associated with the phase separation, revealing characteristics of a Landau-level structure.
We present mean-field calculations of the equilibrium state in a gaseous mixture of bosonic and spin-polarized fermionic atoms with repulsive or attractive interspecies interactions, confined inside a cigar-shaped trap under conditions such that the radial thickness of the two atomic clouds is approaching the magnitude of the s-wave scattering lengths. In this regime the kinetic pressure of the fermionic component is dominant. Full demixing under repulsive boson-fermion interactions can occur only when the number of fermions in the trap is below a threshold, and collapse under attractive inter…
We investigate the mixing-demixing transition and the collapse in a quasi-two-dimensional degenerate boson-fermion mixture (DBFM) with a bosonic vortex. We solve numerically a quantum-hydrodynamic model based on a new density functional which accurately takes into account the dimensional crossover. It is demonstrated that with the increase of interspecies repulsion, a mixed state of DBFM could turn into a demixed state. The system collapses for interspecies attraction above a critical value which depends on the vortex quantum number. For interspecies attraction just below this critical limit t…
We explore the conditions under which identical particles in unitary linear networks behave as the other species, i.e. bosons as fermions and fermions as bosons. It is found that the Boson-Sampling computer of Aaronson & Arkhipov can be implemented in an interference experiment with non-interacting fermions in an appropriately entangled state. Moreover, a scheme is proposed which simulates the scattershot version of the Boson-Sampling computer by preparing, on the fly, the required entangled state of fermions from an unentangled one.
We investigate the properties of trapped Bose-Fermi mixtures for experimentally relevant parameters in one dimension. The effect of the attractive Bose-Fermi interaction onto the bosons is to deepen the parabolic trapping potential, and to reduce the bosonic repulsion in higher order, leading to an increase in bosonic coherence. The opposite effect was observed in ${}^{87}$Rb - ${}^{40}$K experiments, most likely due to a sharp rise in temperature. We also discuss low-temperature features, such as a bosonic Mott insulator transition driven by the fermion concentration, and the formation of com…
We analyze the dynamical response of a ultracold binary gas mixture in presence of strong boson-fermion couplings. Mapping the problem onto that of the optical response of a metal/semiconductor electronic degrees of freedom to electromagnetic perturbation we calculate the corresponding dynamic linear response susceptibility in the non-perturbative regimes of strong boson-fermion coupling using diagrammatic resummation technique as well as quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We evaluate the Bragg spectral function as well as the optical conductivity and find a pseudogap, which forms in certain par…
Motivated by recent experiments and theoretical investigations on binary mixtures, we investigate the miscible-immiscible transition at finite temperature by means of Quantum Monte Carlo. Based on the observation that the segregated phase is strongly affected by temperature, we propose to use the degree of demixing for thermometry of a binary bosonic mixture trapped in an optical lattice. We show that the proposed method is especially sensitive at low temperatures, of the order of the tunnelling amplitude, and therefore is particularly suitable in the regime where quantum magnetism is expected…
A generalized Fermi-Bose mapping method is used to determine the exact ground states of several models of mixtures of strongly interacting ultracold gases in tight waveguides, which are generalizations of the Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gas (1D Bose gas with point hard cores) and fermionic Tonks-Girardeau (FTG) gas (1D spin-aligned Fermi gas with infinitely strong zero-range attractions). We detail the case of a Bose-Fermi mixture with TG boson-boson (BB) and boson-fermion (BF) interactions. Exact results are given for density profiles in a harmonic trap, single-particle density matrices, momentum di…
We have considered one-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture with equal densities and unequal masses using numerical density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). For the mass ratio of K-Rb mixture and attraction between bosons and fermions, we determined the phase diagram. For weak boson-boson interactions, there is a direct transition between two-component Luttinger liquid and collapsed phases as the boson-fermion attraction is increased. For strong enough boson-boson interactions, we find an intermediate "paired" phase, which is a single-component Luttinger liquid of composite particles. We investi…
We consider the phase separation of a trapped atomic mixture of fermions with unequal spin populations near a Feshbach resonance. In particular, we determine the density profile of the two spin states and compare with the recent experiments of Partridge et al. (cond-mat/0511752). Overall we find quite good agreement. We identify the remaining discrepancies and pose them as open problems.
Using cold bosonic atoms with two (hyperfine) ground states, we introduce a spin-boson mixture which allows to implement the quantum Ising model in a tunable dissipative environment. The first specie lies in a deep optical lattice with tightly confining wells and forms a spin array; spin-up/down corresponds to occupation by one/no atom at each site. The second specie forms a superfluid reservoir. Different species are coupled coherently via laser transitions and collisions. Whereas the laser coupling mimics a transverse field for the spins, the coupling to the reservoir sound modes induces a f…
We determine the phase diagram of a mixture of ultracold bosons and polarized fermions placed in an optical lattice using mean field theory. In the limit of strong atom-atom interactions, there exist quantum phases that involve pairing of fermions with one or more bosons, or bosonic holes, respectively. We obtain the analytic form of the phase boundaries separating these composite fermion phases from the bosonic superfluid coexisting with Fermi liquid. We compare the results with numerical simulations and discuss their validity and relevance for current experiments.
Boson-fermion pairing is considered in a discrete environment of bosons and fully spin-polarized fermions, coupled via an attractive Bose-Fermi Hubbard Hamiltonian in one dimension. The results of the T-matrix approximation for particles of equal mass and at double half filling are compared with the results of exact diagonalization and with Quantum Monte Carlo results. Satisfactory agreement for most quantities is found. The appearance of a stable, weak-coupling pairing mode is also confirmed.
The phase diagrams of low density Fermi-Fermi mixtures with equal or unequal masses and equal or unequal populations are described at zero and finite temperatures in the strong attraction limit. In this limit, the Fermi-Fermi mixture can be described by a weakly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture, where the bosons correspond to Feshbach molecules and the fermions correspond to excess atoms. First, we discuss the three and four fermion scattering processes, and use the exact boson-fermion and boson-boson scattering lengths to generate the phase diagrams in terms of the underlying fermion-fermion sc…
We study a mixture of strongly interacting bosons and spinless fermions with on-site repulsion in a three-dimensional optical lattice. For this purpose we develop and apply a generalized DMFT scheme, which is exact in infinite dimensions and reliably describes the full range from weak to strong coupling. We restrict ourselves to half filling. For weak Bose-Fermi repulsion a supersolid forms, in which bosonic superfluidity coexists with charge-density wave order. For stronger interspecies repulsion the bosons become localized while the charge density wave order persists. The system is unstable …
We use a time-dependent dynamical mean-field-hydrodynamic model to study the formation of fermionic bright solitons in a trapped degenerate Fermi gas mixed with a Bose-Einstein condensate in a quasi-one-dimensional cigar-shaped geometry. Due to a strong Pauli-blocking repulsion among spin-polarized fermions at short distances there cannot be bright fermionic solitons in the case of repulsive boson-fermion interactions. However, we demonstrate that stable bright fermionic solitons can be formed for a sufficiently attractive boson-fermion interaction in a boson-fermion mixture. We also consider …
Motivated by the recent experiments on Bose-Einstein mixtures with tunable interactions we study repulsive weakly interacting Bose mixtures at finite temperature. We obtain phase diagrams using Hartree-Fock theory which are directly applicable to experimentally trapped systems. Almost all features of the diagrams can be characterized using simple physical insights. Our work reveals two surprising effects which are dissimilar to a system at zero temperature. First of all, no pure phases exist, that is, at each point in the trap, particles of both species are always present. Second, even for ver…
We investigate theoretically the low-temperature physics of a two-component ultracold mixture of bosons and fermions in disordered optical lattices. We focus on the strongly correlated regime. We show that, under specific conditions, composite fermions, made of one fermion plus one bosonic hole, form. The composite picture is used to derive an effective Hamiltonian whose parameters can be controlled via the boson-boson and the boson-fermion interactions, the tunneling terms and the inhomogeneities. We finally investigate the quantum phase diagram of the composite fermions and we show that it c…
We consider a strongly interacting one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Fermi mixture confined in a harmonic trap. It consists of a Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gas (1D Bose gas with repulsive hard-core interactions) and of a non-interacting Fermi gas (1D spin-aligned Fermi gas), both species interacting through hard-core repulsive interactions. Using a generalized Bose-Fermi mapping, we determine the exact particle density profiles, momentum distributions and behaviour of the mixture under 1D expansion when opening the trap. In real space, bosons and fermions do not display any phase separation: the respective …
We construct a Galilean invariant low-energy effective field theory of boson-fermion mixtures and study bound fermion states on a vortex of boson superfluid. We derive a simple criterion to determine for which values of the fermion angular momentum l there exist an infinite number of bound energy levels. We apply our formalism to two boson-fermion mixed systems: the dilute solution of He3 in He4 superfluid and the cold polarized Fermi gas on the BEC side of the "splitting point". For the He3-He4 mixture, we determine parameters of the effective theory from experimental data as functions of pre…
We propose a setup with ultracold atomic gases that can be used to make a nonrelativistic superstring in four spacetime dimensions. In particular, we consider for the creation of the superstring a fermionic atomic gas that is trapped in the core of a vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We explain the required tuning of experimental parameters to achieve supersymmetry between the fermionic atoms and the bosonic modes describing the oscillations in the vortex position. Furthermore, we discuss the experimental consequences of supersymmetry.
Using coupled equations for the bosonic and fermionic order parameters, we construct families of gap solitons (GSs) in a nearly one-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture trapped in a periodic optical-lattice (OL) potential, the boson and fermion components being in the states of the BEC and BCS superfluid, respectively. Fundamental GSs are compact states trapped, essentially, in a single cell of the lattice. Full families of such solutions are constructed in the first two bandgaps of the OL-induced spectrum, by means of variational and numerical methods, which are found to be in good agreement. The f…
It is shown that the mean-field description of a boson-fermion mixture with a dominating fermionic component, loaded in a one-dimensional optical lattice, is reduced to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a periodic potential and periodic nonlinearity. In such system there exist localized modes having peculiar properties. In particular, for some regions of parameters there exists a lower bound for a number of atoms necessary for creation of a mode, while for other domains small amplitude gap solitons are not available in vicinity of either of the gap edges. We found that the lowest branch …
We suggest a time-dependent dynamical mean-field-hydrodynamic model for the collapse of a trapped boson-fermion condensate and perform numerical simulation based on it to understand some aspects of the experiment by Modugno et al. [Science 297, 2240 (2002)] on the collapse of the fermionic condensate in the 40K-87Rb mixture. We show that the mean-field model explains the formation of a stationary boson-fermion condensate at zero temparature with relative sizes compatible with experiment. This model is also found to yield a faithful representation of the collapse dynamics in qualitative agreeme…
