We review some recent developments in the theory of rotating atomic gases. These studies have thrown light on the process of nucleation of vortices in regimes where mean-field methods are inadequate. In our review we shall describe and compare quantum vortex nucleation of a dilute ultracold bosonic gas trapped in three different configurations: a one-dimensional ring lattice, a one-dimensional ring superlattice and a two-dimensional asymmetric harmonic trap. In all of them there is a critical rotation frequency, at which the particles in the ground state exhibit strong quantum correlations. However, the entanglement properties vary significantly from case to case. We explain these differences by characterizing the intermediate states that participate in the vortex nucleation process. Finally, we show that noise correlations are sensitive to these differences. These new studies have, therefore, shown how novel quantum states may be produced and probed in future experiments with rotating neutral atom systems.
We clarify some technical issues in the present generalized effective-potential Landau theory (GEPLT) that makes the GEPLT more consistent and complete. Utilizing this clarified GEPLT, we analytically study the quantum phase transitions of ultracold Bose gases in bipartite superlattices at zero termparture. The corresponding quantum phase boundaries are analytically calculated up to the third-order hopping, which are in excellent agreement with the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations.
The object of study of this thesis are dipolar systems in the quantum degenerate regime. In general, dealing with many-body systems and evaluating their properties requires to deal with the Schrödinger equation. In the present study we employ different Monte Carlo methods, that are stochastic techniques that allow to find numerical solutions to it.
We show that the Bose-Hubbard Model exhibits an increase in density with temperature at fixed pressure in the regular fluid regime and in the superfluid phase. The anomaly at the Bose-Einstein condensate is the first density anomaly observed in a quantum state. We propose that the mechanism underlying both the normal phase and the superfluid phase anomalies is related to zero point entropies and ground state phase transitions. A connection with the typical experimental scales and setups is also addressed. This key finding opens a new pathway for theoretical and experimental studies of water-li…
Weyl fermion, also referred to as pseudo-magnetic monopole in momentum space, is an undiscovered massless elementary particle with half-integer spin predicted according to relativistic quantum field theory. Motivated by the recent experimental observation of Weyl semimetal band in ultracold Bose gases with Raman-assisted 3D spin-orbit coupling, we investigate the properties and possible observation of Weyl fermions in the low-energy quasi-particle excitations of ultracold Fermi gases. Following a previous suggestion that the existing Raman lattice scheme can be readily generalized to fermionic…
We study experimentally the dissipative dynamics of ultracold bosonic gases in a dynamic disorder potential with tunable correlation time. First, we measure the heating rate of thermal clouds exposed to the dynamic potential and present a model of the heating process, revealing the microscopic origin of dissipation from a thermal, trapped cloud of bosons. Second, for Bose-Einstein condensates, we measure the particle loss rate induced by the dynamic environment. Depending on the correlation time, the losses are either dominated by heating of residual thermal particles or the creation of excita…
Ultracold atomic Fermi gases can be tuned to interact strongly, where they display spectroscopic signatures above the superfluid transition reminiscent of the pseudogap in cuprates. However, the extent of the analogy can be questioned, since thermodynamic quantities in the low temperature spin-imbalanced normal state can be described successfully using Fermi liquid theory. Here we present spin susceptibility measurements across the interaction strength-temperature phase diagram using a novel radiofrequency technique with ultracold $^6\textrm{Li}$ gases. For all significant interaction strength…
We present two Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) algorithms for systems of ultracold quantum gases featuring synthetic spin-orbit interactions. The first one is a discrete spin generalization of the T- moves spin-orbit DMC, which provides an upper bound to the fixed-phase energy. The second is a spin-integrated DMC method which recovers the fixed-phase property by avoiding the definition of the effective Hamiltonian involved in the T-moves approach. The latter is a more accurate method but it is restricted to spin-independent two-body interactions. We report a comparison between both algorithms for …
Motivated by recent experimental advances in ultracold atomic gases placed in cavities, we study the influence of the atom-cavity coupling on the Fermi gases trapped in optical lattices. By adiabatic elimination of the cavity photon field, the atom-cavity coupling gives rise to effective long-range interactions. It results in a variety of two-body scattering processes, during which the atomic pairs can acquire an additional center-of-mass momentum. This reveals the possibility of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluids in which the atomic pairing momentum is nonzero. By inspecting …
We reveal that the p-wave superfluid can be realized in a mixture of fermionic and F=1 bosonic gases. We derive a general set of the gap equations for gaps in the s- and p-channels. It is found that the spin-spin bose-fermi interactions favor the p-wave pairing and naturally suppress the pairing in the s-channel. The gap equations for the polar phase of p-wave superfluid fermions are numerically solved. It is shown that a pure p-wave superfluid can be observed in a well-controlled environment of atomic physics.
We experimentally realize the spin-tensor momentum coupling (STMC) using the three ground Zeeman states coupled by three Raman laser beams in ultracold atomic system of $^{40}$K Fermi atoms. This new type of STMC consists of two bright-state bands as a regular spin-orbit coupled spin-1/2 system and one dark-state middle band. Using radio-frequency spin-injection spectroscopy, we investigate the energy band of STMC. It is demonstrated that the middle state is a dark state in the STMC system. The realized energy band of STMC may open the door for further exploring exotic quantum matters.
We show that arbitrarily high-order exceptional points (EPs) can be achieved in a repulsively interacting two-species Bose gas in one dimension. By exactly solving the non-Hermitian two-boson problem, we demonstrate the existence of third-order EPs when the system is driven across the parity-time symmetry breaking transition. We further address the fourth-order EPs with three bosons and generalize the results to $N$-body system, where the EP order can be as high as $N+1$. Physically, such high order originates from the intrinsic ferromagnetic correlation in spinor bosons, which renders the ent…
Designer optical control of interactions in ultracold atomic gases has wide application, from creating new quantum phases to modeling the physics of black holes. We demonstrate spatial control of interactions in a two-component cloud of $^6$Li fermions, using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) to create a "sandwich" of resonantly and weakly interacting regions. Interaction designs are imprinted on the trapped cloud by two laser beams and manipulated with just MHz changes in the frequency of one beam. We employ radio-frequency spectroscopy to measure the imprinted 1D spatial profile…
