A time-dependent optical lattice with staggered particle current in the tight-binding regime was considered that can be described by a time-independent effective lattice model with an artificial staggered magnetic field. The low energy description of a single-component fermion in this lattice at half-filling is provided by two copies of ideal two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions. The Dirac cones are generally anisotropic and can be tuned by the external staggered flux $\p$. For bosons, the staggered flux modifies the single-particle spectrum such that in the weak coupling limit, depending on the flux $\p$, distinct superfluid phases are realized. Their properties are discussed, the nature of the phase transitions between them is establised, and Bogoliubov theory is used to determine their excitation spectra. Then the generalized superfluid-Mott-insulator transition is studied in the presence of the staggered flux and the complete phase diagram is established. Finally, the momentum distribution of the distinct superfluid phases is obtained, which provides a clear experimental signature of each phase in ballistic expansion experiments.
We study superconductivity in an ultracold Bose-Fermi mixture loaded into a square optical lattice subjected to a staggered flux. While the bosons form a superfluid at very low temperature and weak interaction, the interacting fermions experience an additional long-ranged attractive interaction mediated by phonons in the bosonic superfluid. This leads us to consider a generalized Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor attractive interactions, which give rise to two competing superconducting channels. We use the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory to determine the regimes where distinct s…
We show that the dynamics of cold bosonic atoms in a two-dimensional square optical lattice produced by a bichromatic light-shift potential is described by a Bose-Hubbard model with an additional effective staggered magnetic field. In addition to the known uniform superfluid and Mott insulating phases, the zero-temperature phase diagram exhibits a novel kind of finite-momentum superfluid phase, characterized by a quantized staggered rotational flux. An extension for fermionic atoms leads to an anisotropic Dirac spectrum, which is relevant to graphene and high-$T_c$ superconductors.
We investigate the ground state properties of ultracold atoms trapped in a two-leg ladder potential in the presence of an artificial magnetic field in a staggered configuration. We focus on the strongly interacting regime and use the Landau theory of phase transitions and a mean field Gutzwiller variational method to identify the stable superfluid phases and their boundaries with the Mott-insulator regime as a function of magnetic flux. In addition, we calculate the local and chiral currents of these superfluid phases, which show a staggered vortex anti-vortex configuration. The analytical res…
Gauge fields are ubiquitous in nature. In the context of quantum electrodynamics, you may be most familiar with the photon, which represents the gauge field mediating electromagnetic forces. But there are also gluons, which mediate strong forces, and the W and Z particles, which mediate the weak forces. According to the standard model, those few gauge bosons, in fact, mediate all elementary interactions.
Time-of-flight images are a common tool in ultracold atomic experiments, employed to determine the quasimomentum distribution of the interacting particles. If one introduces a constant artificial electric field, then the quasimomentum distribution evolves in time as Bloch oscillations are generated in the system and then damped showing a complex series of patterns. Surprisingly, in different mass Fermi-Fermi mixtures, these patterns can survive for long times, and resemble the stability of the red spot of Jupiter in classical nonlinear hydrodynamics. In this work, we illustrate the rich phenom…
We show that non-abelian potentials acting on ultracold gases with two hyperfine levels can give rise to ground states with non-abelian excitations. We consider a realistic gauge potential for which the Landau levels can be exactly determined: the non-abelian part of the vector potential makes the Landau levels non-degenerate. In the presence of strong repulsive interactions, deformed Laughlin ground states occur in general. However, at the degeneracy points of the Landau levels, non-abelian quantum Hall states appear: these ground states, including deformed Moore-Read states (characterized by…
We consider interacting ultracold fermions subject to Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We construct a single-branch interacting theory for the Fermi gas when the system is dilute enough so that the positive helicity branch is not occupied at all in the non-interacting ground state. We show that the theory is renormalizable in perturbation theory and therefore yields a model of polarized fermions that avoids a multi-channel treatment of the problem. Our results open the path towards a much more straightforward approach to the many-body physics of cold atoms subject to artificial vector potentials.
We show how a fermionic quantum gas in an optical lattice and coupled to the field of an optical cavity can self-organize into a state in which the spontaneously emerging cavity field amplitude induces an artificial magnetic field. The fermions form either a chiral insulator or a chiral liquid carrying edge currents. The feedback mechanism via the cavity field enables robust and fast switching of the edge currents and the cavity output can be employed for non-destructive measurements of the atomic dynamics.
Emulation of gauge fields for ultracold atoms provides access to a class of exotic states arising in strong magnetic fields. Here we report on the experimental realisation of tunable staggered gauge fields in a periodically driven triangular lattice. For maximal staggered magnetic fluxes, the doubly degenerate superfluid ground state breaks both a discrete Z2 (Ising) symmetry and a continuous U(1) symmetry. By measuring an Ising order parameter, we observe a thermally driven phase transition from an ordered antiferromagnetic to an unordered paramagnetic state and textbook-like magnetisation cu…
We consider a generalization of the 2-dimensional (2D) quantum-Hall insulator to a non-compact, non-Abelian gauge group, the Heisenberg-Weyl group. We show that this kind of insulator is actually a layered 3D insulator with nontrivial topology. We further show that nontrivial combinations of quantized transverse conductivities can be engineered with the help of a staggered potential. We investigate the robustness and topological nature of this conductivity and connect it to the surface modes of the system. We also propose a simple experimental realization with ultracold atoms in 3D confined to…
We study ultracold Rydberg-dressed Bose gases subject to artificial gauge fields in the fractional quantum Hall (FQH) regime. The characteristics of the Rydberg interaction gives rise to interesting many-body ground states different from standard FQH physics in the lowest Landau level (LLL). The non-local but rapidly decreasing interaction potential favors crystalline ground states for very dilute systems. While a simple Wigner crystal becomes energetically favorable compared to the Laughlin liquid for filling fractions $ν<1/12$, a correlated crystal of composite particles emerges already for …
We consider the dynamics of two-dimensional interacting ultracold bosons triggered by suddenly switching on an artificial gauge field. The system is initialized in the ground state of a harmonic trapping potential. As a function of the strength of the applied artificial gauge, we analyze the emergent dynamics by monitoring the angular momentum, the fragmentation as well the entropy and variance of the entropy of absorption or single-shot images. We solve the underlying time-dependent many-boson Schrödinger equation using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for indistinguisha…
The entanglement of vortices in a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with artificial gauge fields is investigated using the exact diagonalization techniques. We propose an effective Hamiltonian for the spin-spin interactions between vortices responsible for this entanglement, and show that the entanglement can be detected through the quantum interference of the bosons in the vortex centers achieved using the Raman coupling and the quantum gas microscope. The strong bosonic coherence between the vortex centers originates from the charge-density wave order in the vortex core. It is robust agains…
Three-dimensional Weyl fermions are found to emerge from simple cubic lattices with staggered fluxes. The mechanism is to gap the quadratic band touching by time-reversal-symmetry-breaking hoppings. The system exhibits rich phase diagrams where the number of Weyl fermions and their topological charge are tunable via the plaquette fluxes. The Weyl semimetal state is shown to be the intermediate phase between non-topological semimetal and quantum anomalous Hall insulator. The transitions between those phases can be understood through the evolution of the Weyl points as Berry flux insertion proce…
We consider the angular momentum of a harmonically trapped, noninteracting Fermi gas subject to either rotation or to an artificial gauge field. The angular momentum of the gas is shown to display oscillations as a function of the particle number or chemical potential. This phenomenon is analogous to the de Haas - van Alphen oscillations of the magnetization in the solid-state context. However, key differences exist between the solid-state and ultracold atomic gases that we point out and analyze. We explore the dependence of the visibility of these oscillations on the physical parameters and p…
We derive and discuss an experimentally realistic model describing ultracold atoms in an optical lattice including a commensurate, but staggered, Zeeman field. The resulting band structure is quite exotic; fermions in the third band have an unusual rounded picture-frame Fermi surface (essentially two concentric squircles), leading to imperfect nesting. We develop a generalized SO(3,1)xSO(3,1) theory describing the spin and charge degrees of freedom simultaneously, and show that the system can develop a coupled spin-charge-density wave order. This ordering is absent in studies of the Hubbard mo…
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices serve as a tool to model different physical phenomena appearing originally in condensed matter. To study magnetic phenomena one needs to engineer synthetic fields as atoms are neutral. Appropriately shaped optical potentials force atoms to mimic charged particles moving in a given field. We present the realization of artificial gauge fields for the observation of anomalous Hall effect. Two species of attractively interacting ultracold fermions are considered to be trapped in a shaken two dimensional triangular lattice. A combination of interaction induced tu…
Motivated by experiments on Josephson junction arrays in a magnetic field and ultracold interacting atoms in an optical lattice in the presence of synthetic orbital magnetic fields, we study the "fully frustrated" Bose-Hubbard model and quantum XY model with half a flux quantum per lattice plaquette. Using Monte Carlo simulations and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, we show that the phase diagram of such kinetically frustrated bosons displays three phases on a two-leg ladder: a weakly interacting chiral superfluid phase with staggered loop currents which spontaneously br…
We study the quantum ground state of ultracold bosons in a two-dimensional square lattice. The bosons interact via the repulsive dipolar interactions and s-wave scattering. The dynamics is described by the extended Bose-Hubbard model including correlated hopping due to the dipolar interactions, the coefficients are found from the second quantized Hamiltonian using the Wannier expansion with realistic parameters. We determine the phase diagram using the Gutzwiller ansatz in the regime where the coefficients of the correlated hopping terms are negative and can interfere with the tunneling due to…
We report on the observation of the Meissner effect in bosonic flux ladders of ultracold atoms. Using artificial gauge fields induced by laser-assisted tunneling, we realize arrays of decoupled ladder systems that are exposed to a uniform magnetic field. By suddenly decoupling the ladders and projecting into isolated double wells, we are able to measure the currents on each side of the ladder. For large coupling strengths along the rungs of the ladder, we find a saturated maximum chiral current corresponding to a full screening of the artificial magnetic field. For lower coupling strengths, th…
Motivated by the recent progress in engineering artificial non-Abelian gauge fields for ultracold fermions in optical lattices, we investigate the time-reversal-invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard model. We include an additional staggered lattice potential and an artificial Rashba--type spin-orbit coupling term available in experiment. Without interactions, the system can be either a (semi)-metal, a normal or a topological insulator, and we present the non-Abelian generalization of the Hofstadter butterfly. Using a combination of real-space dynamical mean-field theory (RDMFT), analytical arguments, a…
In recent years, ultracold atoms in optical lattices have proven their great value as quantum simulators for studying strongly correlated phases and complex phenomena in solid-state systems. Here we reveal their potential as quantum simulators for molecular physics and propose a technique to image the three-dimensional molecular orbitals with high resolution. The outstanding tunability of ultracold atoms in terms of potential and interaction offer fully adjustable model systems for gaining deep insight into the electronic structure of molecules. We study the orbitals of an artificial benzene m…
We report on a dynamical mean-field theoretical analysis of emerging low-temperature phases in multicomponent gases of fermionic alkaline-earth(-like) atoms in state-dependent optical lattices. Using the example of $^{173}$Yb atoms, we show that a two-orbital mixture with two nuclear spin components is a promising candidate for studies of not only magnetic but also staggered orbital ordering peculiar to certain solid-state materials. We calculate and study the phase diagram of the full Hamiltonian with parameters similar to existing experiments and reveal an antiferroorbital phase. This long-r…
Light-induced spin-orbit coupling is a flexible tool to study quantum magnetism with ultracold atoms. In this work we show that spin-orbit coupled Bose gases in a one-dimensional optical lattice can be mapped into a two-leg triangular ladder with staggered flux following a lowest-band truncation of the Hamiltonian. The effective flux and the ratio of the tunneling strengths can be independently adjusted to a wide range of values. We identify a certain regime of parameters where a hard-core boson approximation holds and the system realizes a frustrated triangular spin ladder with tunable flux. …
Topological matter is a popular topic in both condensed matter and cold atom research. In the past decades, a variety of models have been identified with fascinating topological features. Some, but not all, of the models can be found in materials. As a fully controllable system, cold atoms trapped in optical lattices provide an ideal platform to simulate and realize these topological models. Here we present a proposal for synthesizing topological models in cold atoms based on a one-dimensional (1D) spin-dependent optical lattice potential. In our system, features such as staggered tunneling, s…
We consider the time-reversal-invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard model which can be realized in cold atom experiments. In these experiments, an additional staggered potential and an artificial Rashba--type spin-orbit coupling are available. Without interactions, the system exhibits various phases such as topological and normal insulator, metal as well as semi--metal phases with two or even more Dirac cones. Using a combination of real-space dynamical mean-field theory and analytical techniques, we discuss the effect of on-site interactions and determine the corresponding phase diagram. In particular…
We propose an experimental scheme to realize the valley-dependent gauge fields for ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in a state-dependent square optical lattice. Our scheme relies on two sets of Raman laser beams to engineer the hopping between adjacent sites populated by two-component fermionic atoms. One set of Raman beams are used to realize a staggered π-flux lattice, where low energy atoms near two inequivalent Dirac points should be described by the Dirac equation for spin-1/2 particles. Another set of laser beams with proper Rabi frequencies are added to further modulate the atomic hopp…
We propose an arresting scheme for emulating the famous Faraday effect in ultracold atomic gases. Inspired by the similarities between the light field and bosonic atoms, we represent the light propagation in medium by the atomic transport in accompany of the laser-atom interaction. An artificial magneto-optic Faraday effect is readily signaled by the spin imbalance of atoms, with the setup of laser fields offering a high controllability for quantum manipulation. The present scheme is really feasible and can be realized with existing experimental techniques of ultracold atoms. It generalizes th…
Motivated by the search for quantum liquid crystal phases in a gas of ultracold atoms and molecules, we study the density wave and nematic instabilities of dipolar fermions on the two-dimensional square lattice (in the $x-y$ plane) with dipoles pointing to the $z$ direction. We determine the phase diagram using two complimentary methods, the Hatree-Fock mean field theory and the linear response analysis of compressibility. Both give consistent results. In addition to the staggered ($π$, $π$) density wave, over a finite range of densities and hopping parameters, the ground state of the system f…
We report on the experimental implementation of tunable occupation-dependent tunneling in a Bose-Hubbard system of ultracold atoms via time-periodic modulation of the on-site interaction energy. The tunneling rate is inferred from a time-resolved measurement of the lattice site occupation after a quantum quench. We demonstrate coherent control of the tunneling dynamics in the correlated many-body system, including full suppression of tunneling as predicted within the framework of Floquet theory. We find that the tunneling rate explicitly depends on the atom number difference in neighboring lat…
We propose a method to reach the antiferromagnetic state of two-dimensional Fermi gases trapped in optical lattices: Independent subsystems are prepared in suitable initial states and then connected by a sudden or slow quench of the tunneling between the subsystems. Examples of suitable low-entropy subsystems are double wells or plaquettes, which can be experimentally realised in Mott insulating shells using optical super-lattices. We estimate the effective temperature T* of the system after the quench by calculating the distribution of excitations created using the spin wave approximation in …
We realize and study the ionic Hubbard model using an interacting two-component gas of fermionic atoms loaded into an optical lattice. The bipartite lattice has honeycomb geometry with a staggered energy-offset that explicitly breaks the inversion symmetry. Distinct density-ordered phases are identified using noise correlation measurements of the atomic momentum distribution. For weak interactions the geometry induces a charge density wave. For strong repulsive interactions we detect a strong suppression of doubly occupied sites, as expected for a Mott insulating state, and the externally brok…
We show that the magnetic field produced by a chiral ferromagnetic film can be applied to control ultracold atoms. The film will act as a magnetic mirror or a reflection grating for ultracold atoms when it is in the helical phase or the skyrmion crystal phase respectively. By applying a bias magnetic field and a time-dependent magnetic field, one-dimensional or two-dimensional magnetic lattices including honeycomb, Kagome, triangular types can be created to trap the ultracold atoms. We have also discussed the trapping height, potential barrier, trapping frequency, and Majorana loss rate for ea…
Artificial gauge fields open new possibilities to realize quantum many-body systems with ultracold atoms, by engineering Hamiltonians usually associated with electronic systems. In the presence of a periodic potential, artificial gauge fields may bring ultracold atoms closer to the quantum Hall regime. Here, we describe a one-dimensional lattice derived purely from effective Zeeman-shifts resulting from a combination of Raman coupling and radiofrequency magnetic fields. In this lattice, the tunneling matrix element is generally complex. We control both the amplitude and the phase of this tunne…
A paradigm model of modern atom optics is studied, strongly interacting ultracold bosons in an optical lattice. This many-body system can be artificially opened in a controlled manner by modern experimental techniques. We present results based on a non-hermitian effective Hamiltonian whose quantum spectrum is analyzed. The direct access to the spectrum of the metastable many-body system allows us to easily identify relatively stable quantum states, corresponding to previously predicted solitonic many-body structures.
We study the behaviour of ultracold bosonic gas in the critical region above the Bose-Einstein condensation in the presence of an artificial magnetic field, $B_\mathrm{art}$. We show that the condensate fluctuations above the critical temperature $T_c$ cause the fluctuational susceptibility, $χ_\mathrm{fl}$, of a uniform gas to have a stronger power-law divergence than in an analogous superconducting system. Measuring such a divergence opens new ways of exploring critical properties of the ultracold gas and an opportunity of an accurate determination of $T_c$. We describe a method of measuring…
Magneto-optical effect is a fundamental but broad concept in magnetic mediums. Here we propose a scheme for its quantum emulation using ultracold atoms. By representing the light-medium interaction in the quantum-emulation manner, the artificial magneto-optical effect emerges under an entirely different mechanism from the conventional picture. The underlying polarization state extracted in the synthetic dimension displays a different response to various experimental setups. Notably, the magneto-optical rotation is related to the bulk topology in synthetic dimensions, and thus provides an unamb…
Although Weyl semimetals have been extensively studied for exploring rich topological physics, the direct observation of the celebrated chiral magnetic effect (CME) associated with the so-called dipolar chiral anomaly has long intrigued and challenged physicists, still remaining elusive in nature. Here we propose a feasible scheme for experimental implementation of ultracold atoms that may enable us to probe the CME with a pure topological current in an artificial Weyl semimetal. The paired Weyl points with the dipolar chiral anomaly emerge in the presence of the well-designed spin-orbital cou…
Interactions of ultracold atoms with Rashba spin-orbit coupling, currently being studied with simulated (artificial) gauge fields, have nontrivial ultraviolet and infrared behavior. Examining the ultraviolet structure of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, we show that the linear ultraviolet divergence in the bare interaction can be renormalized as usual in terms of low-energy scattering lengths, and that for both bosons and fermions ultraviolet logarithmic divergences are absent. Calculating the leading order effective interaction with full dependence on the spin-orbit coupling strength and the cent…
A phenomenon can hardly be found that accompanied physical paradigms and theoretical concepts in a more reflecting way than magnetism. From the beginnings of metaphysics and the first classical approaches to magnetic poles and streamlines of the field, it has inspired modern physics on its way to the classical field description of electrodynamics, and further to the quantum mechanical description of internal degrees of freedom of elementary particles. Meanwhile, magnetic manifestations have posed and still do pose complex and often controversially debated questions. This regards so various and…
We discuss the thermodynamic signatures for the topological phase transitions into Majorana and Weyl superfluid phases in ultracold Fermi gases in two and three dimensions in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and a Zeeman field. We analyze the thermodynamic properties exhibiting the distinct nature of the topological phase transitions linked with the Majorana fermions (2D Fermi gas) and Weyl fermions (3D Fermi gas) which can be observed experimentally, including pressure, chemical potential, isothermal compressibility, entropy, and specific heat, as a function of the interaction and t…
We propose an experiment to directly probe the non-Abelian statistics of Majorana fermions by braiding them in an s-wave superfluid of ultracold atoms. We show different orders of braiding operations give orthogonal output states that can be distinguished through Raman spectroscopy. Realization of Majorana bound states in an s-wave superfluid requires strong spin-orbital coupling and a controllable Zeeman field in the perpendicular direction. We present a simple laser configuration to generate the artificial spin-orbital coupling and the required Zeeman field in the dark state subspace.
We consider a one-dimensional bosonic gas on a ring lattice, in the presence of a localized barrier, and under the effect of an artificial gauge field. By means of exact diagonalization we study the persistent currents at varying interactions and barrier strength, for various values of lattice filling. While generically the persistent currents are strongly suppressed in the Mott insulator phase, they show a resonant behaviour when the barrier strength becomes of the order of the interaction energy. We explain this phenomenon using an effective single-particle model. We show that this effect is…
Artificial magnetic fields and spin-orbit couplings have been recently generated in ultracold gases in view of realizing topological states of matter and frustrated magnetism in a highly-controllable environment. Despite being dynamically tunable, such artificial gauge fields are genuinely classical and exhibit no back-action from the neutral particles. Here we go beyond this paradigm, and demonstrate how quantized dynamical gauge fields can be created in mixtures of ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Specifically, we propose a protocol by which atoms of one species carry a magnetic flux fel…
Recent experiments on $p$-orbital atomic bosons have suggested the emergence of a spectacular ultracold superfluid with staggered orbital currents in optical lattices. This raises fundamental questions like the effects of collective thermal fluctuations, and how to directly observe such chiral order. Here, we show via Monte Carlo simulations that thermal fluctuations destroy this superfluid in an unexpected two-step process, unveiling an intermediate normal phase with spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry, dubbed "chiral Bose liquid". For integer fillings ($n\geq 2$) in the chiral Mott r…
Dynamics of non-interacting ultracold atoms with artificial spin-orbit coupling is considered. Spin-orbit coupling is created using two moving optical lattices with orthogonal polarizations. Our main goal is to study influence of lattice noise on Rabi oscillations. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of the Zitterbewegung being trembling motion caused by Rabi transitions between states with different velocities. Phase and amplitude fluctuations of lattices are modelled by means of the two-dimensional stochastic Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, also known as harmonic noise. In the the noisel…
A two-dimensional spatially and temporally modulated Wannier-Stark system of ultracold atoms in optical lattices is shown to mimic the behavior of a Dirac particle. Suitable additional modulations generate an artificial gauge field which simulates a magnetic field and imposes the use of the full spinor-four Dirac equation.
We investigate the ground state properties of ultracold atoms with long range interactions trapped in a two leg ladder configuration in the presence of an artificial magnetic field. Using a Gross-Pitaevskii approach and a mean field Gutzwiller variational method, we explore both the weakly interacting and strongly interacting regime, respectively. We calculate the boundaries between the density-wave/supersolid and the Mott-insulator/superfluid phases as a function of magnetic flux and uncover regions of supersolidity. The mean-field results are confirmed by numerical simulations using a cluste…
We analyze the role of impurities in the fractional quantum Hall effect using a highly controllable system of ultracold atoms. We investigate the mechanism responsible for the formation of plateaux in the resistivity/conductivity as a function of the applied magnetic field in the lowest Landau level regime. To this aim, we consider an impurity immersed in a small cloud of an ultracold quantum Bose gas subjected to an artificial magnetic field. We consider scenarios corresponding to experimentally realistic systems with gauge fields induced either by rotation or by appropriately designed laser …
The topological superfluids with Majorana zero modes have not yet been realized in ultracold atoms with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Here we show that these phases can be realized with an artificial gauge potential, which can be regarded as a site-dependent rotating Zeeman field. This potential breaks the inversion symmetry and plays the same role as Rashba spin-orbit coupling. In the inverted bands, this model can open a proper parameter regime for topological superfluids. Strikingly, we find that the interaction near the Fermi surface is dominated by the dispersion scattering in the same band…
We present a scheme that produces a strong U(1)-like gauge field on cold atoms confined in a two-dimensional square optical lattice. Our proposal relies on two essential features, a long-lived metastable excited state that exists for alkaline-earth or Ytterbium atoms, and an optical superlattice. As in the proposal by Jaksch and Zoller [New Journal of Physics 5, 56 (2003)], laser-assisted tunneling between adjacent sites creates an effective magnetic field. In the tight-binding approximation, the atomic motion is described by the Harper Hamiltonian, with a flux across each lattice plaquette th…
We investigate the quantum phases of ultracold atoms trapped in a vortex lattice using a mixture of two bosonic species (A and B), in the presence of an artificial gauge field. Heavy atoms of species B are confined in the array of vortices generated in species A, and they are described through a Bose-Hubbard model. In contrast to the optical-lattice setups, the vortex lattice has an intrinsic dynamics, given by its Tkachenko modes. Including these quantum fluctuations in the effective model for B atoms yields an extended Bose-Hubbard model, with an additional "phonon"-mediated long-range attra…
We study ultracold color fermions with three internal states Red, Green and Blue with ${\rm SU(3)}$ symmetry in optical lattices, when color-orbit coupling and color-flip fields are present. This system corresponds to a generalization of two-internal state fermions with ${\rm SU(2)}$ symmetry in the presence of spin-orbit coupling and spin-flipping Zeeman fields. We investigate the eigenspectrum and Chern numbers to describe different topological phases that emerge in the phase diagrams of color-orbit coupled fermions in optical lattices. We obtain the phases as a function of artificial magnet…
We explore the effects of artificial $U(3)$ gauge potentials on ultracold atoms. We study background gauge fields with both non-constant and constant Wilson loops around plaquettes, obtaining the energy spectra in each case. The scenario of metal-insulator transition for irrational fluxes is also examined. Finally, we discuss the effect of such a gauge potential on the superfluid-insulator transition for bosonic ultracold atoms.
We demonstrate the experimental implementation of an optical lattice that allows for the generation of large homogeneous and tunable artificial magnetic fields with ultracold atoms. Using laser-assisted tunneling in a tilted optical potential we engineer spatially dependent complex tunneling amplitudes. Thereby atoms hopping in the lattice accumulate a phase shift equivalent to the Aharonov-Bohm phase of charged particles in a magnetic field. We determine the local distribution of fluxes through the observation of cyclotron orbits of the atoms on lattice plaquettes, showing that the system is …
We propose an experimentally feasible method to generate a one-dimensional optical lattice potential in an ultracold Bose gas system that depends on the transverse momentum of the atoms. The optical lattice is induced by the artificial gauge potential generated by a periodically driven multi-laser Raman process, which depends on the transverse momentum of the atoms. We study the many-body Bose-Hubbard model in an effective 1D case and show that the superfluid--Mott-insulator transition can be controlled via tuning the transverse momentum of the atomic gas. We examined our prediction via a stro…
