We study the attractive fermionic Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice using determinantal quantum Monte Carlo simulations. By increasing the interaction strength U (relative to the hopping parameter t) at half-filling and zero temperature, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition at 5.0 < U_c/t < 5.1 from a semi-metal to a phase displaying simultaneously superfluid behavior and density order. Doping away from half-filling, and increasing the interaction strength at finite but low temperature T, the system always appears to be a superfluid exhibiting a crossover between a BCS and a molecular regime. These different regimes are analyzed by studying the spectral function. The formation of pairs and the emergence of phase coherence throughout the sample are studied as U is increased and T is lowered.
Motivated by the recent experimental realization of the Haldane model by ultracold fermions in an optical lattice, we investigate phase diagrams of the hard-core Bose-Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice. This model is closely related with a spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic (AF) quantum spin model. Nearest-neighbor (NN) hopping amplitude is positive and it prefers an AF configurations of phases of Bose-Einstein condensates. On the other hand, an amplitude of the next-NN hopping depends on an angle variable as in the Haldane model. Phase diagrams are obtained by means of an extended path-integral Mon…
In a recent letter [D. Poletti et al., EPL 93, 37008 (2011)] a model of attractive spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice at half filling has been studied by mean-field theory, where distinct homogenous phases at rather large attraction strength $V>3.36$, separated by (topological) phase transitions, have been predicted. In this comment we argue that without additional interactions the ground states in these phases are not stable against phase separation. We determine the onset of phase separation at half filling $V_{ps}\approx 1.7$ by means of infinite projected entangled-pair states (iPE…
We study the repulsive Hubbard model on an anisotropic honeycomb lattice within a mean-field and a slave-rotor treatment. In addition to the known semi-metallic and band-insulating phases, obtained for very weak interactions, and the anti-ferromagnetic phase at large couplings, various insulating spin-liquid phases develop at intermediate couplings. Whereas some of these spin liquids have gapless spinon excitations, a gapped one occupies a large region of the phase diagram and becomes the predominant phase for large hopping anisotropies. This phase can be understood in terms of weakly-coupled …
We present a numerical study of the Hubbard model on simply stacked honeycomb and square lattices, motivated by a recent experimental realization of such models with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We perform simulations with different interlayer coupling and interaction strengths and obtain Néel transition temperatures and entropies. We provide data for the equation of state to enable comparisons of experiments and theory. We find an enhancement of the short-range correlations in the anisotropic lattices compared to the isotropic cubic lattice, in parameter regimes suitable for the inter…
In addition to the conventional contribution that is directly controlled by the single-particle energy spectrum, the superfluid phase stiffness of a two-component Fermi gas has a geometric contribution that is governed by the quantum metric of the honeycomb's band structure. Here, we take both contributions into account, and construct phase diagrams for the critical superfluid transition temperature as a function of the chemical potential, particle filling, onsite interaction and next-nearest-neighbor hopping. Our theoretical approach is based on a self-consistent solution of the BCS mean-fiel…
We investigate a spinless Fermi gas trapped in a honeycomb optical lattice with attractive nearest-neighbor interactions. At zero temperature, mean-field theory predicts three quantum phase transitions, two being topological. At low interactions, the system is semi-metallic. Increasing the interaction further, the semi-metal destabilizes into a fully gapped superfluid. At larger interactions, a topological transition occurs and this superfluid phase becomes gapless, with Dirac-like dispersion relations. Finally, increasing again the interaction, a second topological transition occurs and the g…
The quantum dynamics of one-dimensional bosonic Josephson junctions with attractive and repulsive interparticle interactions is studied using the Bose-Hubbard model and by numerically-exact computations of the full many-body Hamiltonian. A symmetry present in the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian dictates an equivalence between the evolution in time of attractive and repulsive Josephson junctions with attractive and repulsive interactions of equal magnitude. The full many-body Hamiltonian does not possess this symmetry and consequently the dynamics of the attractive and repulsive junctions are differen…
We use microscopic Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism to explore the ground-state phase diagram of the single-band attractive Hofstadter-Hubbard model on a square lattice. We show that the interplay between the Hofstadter butterfly and superfluidity breaks spatial symmetry, and gives rise to stripe-ordered superfluid and supersolid phases in large parameter spaces. We also discuss the effects of a trapping potential and comment on the viability of observing stripe-ordered phases with cold Fermi gases.
We study a "helical" superfluid, a nonzero-momentum condensate in a frustrated bosonic model. At mean-field Bogoliubov level, such a novel state exhibits "smectic" fluctuation that are qualitatively stronger than that of a conventional superfluid. We develop a phase diagram and compute a variety of its physical properties, including the spectrum, structure factor, condensate depletion, momentum distribution, all of which are qualitatively distinct from that of a conventional superfluid. Interplay of fluctuations, interaction and lattice effects gives rise to the phenomenon of order-by-disorder…
We investigate the attractive Hubbard model in infinite spatial dimensions by means of dynamical mean-field theory. Using a continuous-time Monte Carlo algorithm in the Nambu formalism as an impurity solver, we directly deal with the superfluid phase in the population imbalanced system. By calculating the superfluid order parameter, the magnetization, and the density of states, we discuss how the polarized superfluid state is realized in the attractive Hubbard model at quarter filling. We find that a drastic change in the density of states is induced by spin imbalanced populations in the super…
In this paper, we study Bose-Hubbard models on the square and honeycomb lattices with complex hopping amplitudes, which are feasible by recent experiments of cold atomic gases in optical lattices. To clarify phase diagrams, we use an extended quantum Monte-Carlo simulations (eQMC). For the system on the square lattice, the complex hopping is realized by an artificial magnetic field. We found that vortex-solid states form for certain set of magnetic field, i.e., the magnetic field with the flux quanta per plaquette $f=p/q$, where $p$ and $q$ are co-prime natural numbers. For the system on the h…
We study fermionic superfluidity in strongly anisotropic optical lattices with attractive interactions utilizing the cluster DMFT method, and focusing in particular on the role of non-local quantum fluctuations. We show that non-local quantum fluctuations impact the BCS superfluid transition dramatically. Moreover, we show that exotic superfluid states with delicate order parameter structure, such as the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase driven by spin population imbalance, can emerge even in the presence of such strong fluctuations.
The influence of the Zeeman magnetic field ($h$) on the ground state evolution of superfluid properties from the weak coupling (BCS like) to the strong coupling limit of tightly bound local pairs (LP) with increasing attraction has been studied. The analysis was carried out within the spin-polarized attractive Hubbard model, for a fixed number of particles and a $d=3$ simple cubic lattice. The broken symmetry Hartree approximation was used. For strong attraction and in the dilute limit, the homogeneous magnetized superconducting phase (SC$_M$) was found in the $(h-|U|)$ and ($P-|U|$) diagrams.
We consider a quasi-one-dimensional model of a two-component Fermi gas at zero temperature on one, two and three-leg attractive-U Hubbard ladders. We construct the grand canonical phase diagram of a two-component spin-polarized gas. We find that the structure of the phase diagram of the attractive-U Hubbard model for two and three leg ladders significantly differs q from the structure of the phase diagram of a single chain. We argue that the single chain model is a special case, and that multichain ladders display qualitative features of the 1D-to-3D crossover, observed in experiments with tra…
We present first-principle numerical calculations for few particle solutions of the attractive Bose-Hubbard model with periodic boundary conditions. We show that the low-energy many-body states found by numerical diagonalization can be written as translational superposition states of compact composite systems of particles. These compact states break the translational symmetry of the problem and their center-of-mass and internal excitations offer simple explanations of the energy spectrum of the full model.
We investigate the attractive Hubbard model in infinite spatial dimensions by combining dynamical mean-field theory with a strong-coupling continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method. By calculating the superfluid order parameter and the density of states, we discuss the stability of the superfluid state. In the intermediate coupling region above the critical temperature, the density of states exhibits a heavy fermion behavior with a quasi-particle peak in the dense system, while a dip structure appears in the dilute system. The formation of the superfluid gap is also addressed.
The mechanism of fermionic pairing is the key to understanding various phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity and the pseudogap phase in cuprate materials. We study the pair correlations in the attractive Hubbard model using ultracold fermions in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By combining the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the compressibility equation of state, we extract the interacting pair correlation functions and deduce a characteristic length scale of pairs as a function of interaction and density filling. At sufficiently low filling and weak on-site interaction, …
We study the attractive SU($N$) Hubbard model with particle-hole symmetry. The model is defined on a bipartite lattice with the number of sites $N_A$ $(N_B)$ in the $A$ $(B)$ sublattice. We prove three theorems that allow us to identify the basic ground-state properties: the degeneracy, the fermion number, and the SU($N$) quantum number. We also show that the ground state exhibits charge density wave order when $|N_A-N_B|$ is macroscopically large. The theorems hold for a bipartite lattice in any dimension, even without translation invariance.
The attractive Fermi-Hubbard model is the simplest theoretical model for studying pairing and superconductivity of fermions on a lattice. Although its s-wave pairing symmetry excludes it as a microscopic model for high-temperature superconductivity, it exhibits much of the relevant phenomenology, including a short-coherence length at intermediate coupling and a pseudogap regime with anomalous properties. Here we study an experimental realization of this model using a two-dimensional (2D) atomic Fermi gas in an optical lattice. Our site-resolved measurements on the normal state reveal checkerbo…
