We study two many-body systems of bosons interacting via an infinite three-body contact repulsion in a lattice: a pairs quasi-condensate induced by correlated hopping and the discrete version of the Pfaffian wavefunction. We propose to experimentally realise systems characterized by such interaction by means of a proper spin-1 lattice Hamiltonian: spin degrees of freedom are locally mapped into occupation numbers of emerging bosons, in a fashion similar to spin-1/2 and hardcore bosons. Such a system can be realized with ultracold spin-1 atoms in a Mott Insulator with filling-factor one. The high versatility of these setups allows us to engineer spin-hopping operators breaking the SU(2) symmetry, as needed to approximate interesting bosonic Hamiltonians with three-body hardcore constraint. For this purpose we combine bichromatic spin-independent superlattices and Raman transitions to induce a different hopping rate for each spin orientation. Finally, we illustrate how our setup could be used to experimentally realize the first setup, i.e. the transition to a pairs quasi-condensed phase of the emerging bosons. We also report on a route towards the realization of a discrete bosonic Pfaffian wavefunction and list some open problems to reach this goal.
We study the formation of (quasi-)coherent matter waves emerging from a Mott insulator for strongly interacting bosons on a one-dimensional lattice. It has been shown previously that a quasi-condensate emerges at momentum k=π/2a, where a is the lattice constant, in the limit of infinitely strong repulsion (hard-core bosons). Here we show that this phenomenon persists for all values of the repulsive interaction that lead to a Mott insulator at a commensurate filling. The non-equilibrium dynamics of hard-core bosons is treated exactly by means of a Jordan-Wigner transformation, and the generic c…
We study the quantum phase transitions of a model that describes the interconversion of interacting bosonic atoms and molecules. Using a classical analysis, we identify a threshold coupling line separating a molecular phase and a mixed phase. Through studies of the energy gap, von Neumann entanglement entropy, and fidelity, we give evidence that this line is associated to a boundary line in the ground-state phase diagram of the quantum system.
We study cold atomic gases with a contact interaction and confined into one-dimension. Crossing the confinement induced resonance the correlation between the bosons increases, and introduces an effective range for the interaction potential. Using the mapping onto the sine-Gordon model and a Hubbard model in the strongly interacting regime allows us to derive the phase diagram in the presence of an optical lattice. We demonstrate the appearance of a phase transition from a Luttinger liquid with algebraic correlations into a crystalline phase with a particle on every second lattice site.
We investigate the ground-state properties of weakly repulsive one-dimensional bosons in the presence of an attractive zero-range impurity potential. First, we derive mean-field solutions to the problem on a finite ring for the two asymptotic cases: (i) all bosons are bound to the impurity and (ii) all bosons are in a scattering state. Moreover, we derive the critical line that separates these regimes in the parameter space. In the thermodynamic limit, this critical line determines the maximum number of bosons that can be bound by the impurity potential, forming an artificial atom. Second, we …
We investigate theoretically soliton excitations and dynamics of their formation in strongly correlated systems of ultracold bosonic atoms in two and three dimensional optical lattices. We derive equations of nonlinear hydrodynamics in the regime of strong interactions and incommensurate fillings, when atoms can be treated as hard core bosons. When parameters change in one direction only we obtain Korteweg-de Vries type equation away from half-filling and modified KdV equation at half-filling. We apply this general analysis to a problem of the decay of the density step. We consider stability o…
While batteries offer electronic source and sink in electronic devices, atomic analogues of source and sink and their theoretical descriptions have been a challenge in cold-atom systems. Here we consider dynamically emerged local potentials as controllable source and sink for bosonic atoms. Although a sink potential can collect bosons in equlibrium and indicate its usefulness in the adiabatic limit, sudden switching of the potential exhibits low effectiveness in pushing bosons into it. This is due to conservation of energy and particle in isolated systems such as cold atoms. By varying the pot…
The dimer-atom-atom recombination process in the system of four identical bosons with resonant interactions is studied. The description uses the exact Alt, Grassberger and Sandhas equations for the four-particle transition operators that are solved in the momentum-space framework. The dimer-dimer and atom-trimer channel contributions to the ultracold dimer-atom-atom recombination rate are calculated. The dimer-atom-atom recombination rate greatly exceeds the three-atom recombination rate.
We predict the existence of high frequency modes in the interference pattern of two condensates made of fermionic-atom dimers. These modes, which result from fermion exchanges between condensates, constitute a striking signature of the dimer composite nature. From the 2-coboson spatial correlation function, that we derive analytically, and the Shiva diagrams that visualize many-body effects specific to composite bosons, we identify the physical origin of these high frequency modes and determine the conditions to see them experimentally by using bound fermionic-atom pairs trapped on optical lat…
Unstable four-boson states having an approximate dimer-atom-atom structure are studied using momentum-space integral equations for the four-particle transition operators. For a given Efimov trimer the universal properties of the lowest associated tetramer are determined. The impact of this tetramer on the atom-trimer and dimer-dimer collisions is analyzed. The reliability of the three-body dimer-atom-atom model is studied.
We present a design for simulating quantum pumping of electrons in a mesoscopic circuit with ultra-cold atoms in a micro-magnetic chip trap. We calculate theoretical results for quantum pumping of both bosons and fermions, identifying differences and common features, including geometric behavior and resonance transmission. We analyze the feasibility of experiments with bosonic $^{87}$Rb and fermionic $^{40}$K atoms with an emphasis on reliable atomic current measurements.
Suppression and enhancement of bosonic stimulation by atomic interactions
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学卡文迪许实验室）；Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院物理系电子研究实验室、MIT-哈佛超冷原子中心）
In a recent work, Murmann {\it et. al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf114}, 080402 (2015)] have experimentally prepared and manipulated a double-well optical potential containing a pair of Fermi atoms as a possible building block of Hubbard model. Here, we carry out a detailed theoretical study on the properties of both fermionic and bosonic two-site Hubbard models with a pair of interacting atoms in a trap with a double-well structure along z-axis and a 2D harmonic confinement along the transverse directions. We consider fermions as of two-component type and bosons as of spinless as well as of two sp…
We analyze the heating of interacting bosonic atoms in an optical lattice due to intensity fluctuations of the lasers forming the lattice. We focus in particular on fluctuations at low frequencies below the band gap frequency, such that the dynamics is restricted to the lowest band. We derive stochastic equations of motion, and analyze the effects on different many-body states, characterizing heating processes in both strongly and weakly interacting regimes. In the limit where the noise spectrum is flat at low frequencies, we can derive an effective Master equation describing the dynamics. We …
We employ the perturbation series expansion for derivation of the reduced master equations for the three-site Bose-Hubbard model subject to strong atom losses from the central site. The model describes a condensate trapped in a triple-well potential subject to externally controlled removal of atoms. We find that the $π$-phase state of the coherent superposition between the side wells decays via two dissipation channels, the single-boson channel (similar to the externally applied dissipation) and the boson-pair channel. The quantum derivation is compared to the classical adiabatic elimination w…
We report on experiments exploring the non-Hermitian dynamics of pairs of two-level atoms tightly confined in an optical lattice and driven by a near-resonant laser. Although spontaneous emission is negligible for the long-lived excited state, two-body dissipation arises from strong inelastic collisions between two atoms in the excited state. We demonstrate quasi-adiabatic control of the internal state of the pairs in the quantum Zeno regime where inelastic losses dominate. Preparing each atom pair in the longest-lived eigenstate of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian describing the dissipative dyna…
We study the spatial correlations of strongly interacting bosons in a ground state, confined in two-dimensional square and three-dimensional cubic lattice. Using combined Bogoliubov method and the quantum rotor approach, we map the Hamiltonian of strongly interacting bosons onto U(1) phase action in order to calculate the atom-atom correlations decay along the principal axis and a diagonal of the lattice plane direction as a function of distance. Lower tunneling rates lead to quicker decays of the correlations, which character becomes exponential. Finally, correlation functions allow us to cal…
We study ground states and elementary excitations of a system of bosonic atoms and diatomic Feshbach molecules trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice using exact diagonalization and variational Monte Carlo methods. We primarily study the case of an average filling of one boson per site. In agreement with bosonization theory, we show that the ground state of the system in the thermodynamic limit corresponds to the Pfaffian-like state when the system is tuned towards the superfluid-to-Mott insulator quantum phase transition. Our study clarifies the possibility of the creation of exotic Pfa…
We numerically investigate, using the time evolving block decimation algorithm, the quantum transport of ultra-cold bosonic atoms in a double well optical lattice through slow and periodic modulation of the lattice parameters (intra- and inter-well tunneling, chemical potential, etc.). The transport of atoms does not depend on the rate of change of the parameters (as along as the change is slow) and can distribute atoms in optical lattices at the quantized level without involving external forces. The transport of atoms depends on the atom filling in each double well and the interaction between…
The concept of topological phases is a powerful framework to characterize ground states of quantum many-body systems that goes beyond the paradigm of symmetry breaking. While a few topological phases appear in condensed matter systems, a current challenge is the implementation and study of such quantum many-body ground states in artificial matter. Here, we report the experimental realization of a symmetry protected topological phase of interacting bosons in a one-dimensional lattice, and demonstrate a robust ground state degeneracy attributed to protected edge states. The setup is based on ato…
We present a scheme to implement a Fermi-Hubbard-like model in ultracold atoms in optical lattices and analyze the topological features of its ground state. In particular, we show that the ground state for appropriate parameters has a large overlap with a lattice version of the bosonic Laughlin state at filling factor one half. The scheme utilizes laser assisted and normal tunnelling in a checkerboard optical lattice. The requirements on temperature, interactions, and hopping strengths are similar to those needed to observe the Néel antiferromagnetic ordering in the standard Fermi-Hubbard mode…
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices undergo a quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator as the lattice potential depth is increased. We describe an approximate theory of interacting bosons in optical lattices which provides a qualitative description of both superfluid and insulator states. The theory is based on a change of variables in which the boson coherent state amplitude is replaced by an effective potential which promotes phase coherence between different number states on each lattice site. It is illustrated here by applying it to uniform and fully frustrated lattic…
We model two bosons in an optical lattice near a Feshbach or photoassociation resonance, focusing on the Bose-Hubbard model in one dimension. Whereas the usual atoms-only theory with a tunable scattering length yields one bound state for a molecular dimer for either attractive or repulsive atom-atom interaction, an atom-molecule theory gives two bound states that may represent attractively and repulsively bound dimers occurring simultaneously. Such unusual molecular physics should be observable for an atom-molecule coupling strength comparable to the width of the dissociation continuum of the …
We study how the bosonic atoms on the excited p-band of an optical lattice are coupled to the lowest s-band and the 2nd excited d-band. We find that in some parameter regimes the atom-atom interactions can cause a dynamical instability of the p-band atoms towards decay to the s- and d-bands. Furthermore, even when dynamical instability is not expected s- and d-bands can become substantially populated.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of two component bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. In the Mott insulating regime, the two-component bosonic system at unity filling can be described by the quantum spin XXZ model. The atoms are initially prepared in their lower spin states. The system becomes out of equilibrium by suddenly introducing spin-orbit coupling to the atoms. The system shows the relaxation and non-stationary dynamics, respectively, in the different interaction regimes. We find that the time average of magnetization is usefu…
We investigate the occurence of Wigner-localization phenomena in bosonic dipolar ultracold few-body systems with Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling. We show that the latter strongly enhances the effects of the dipole-dipole interactions, allowing to reach the Wigner-localized regime for strengths of the dipole moment much smaller than those necessary in the spin-orbit-free case.
Using the micro-canonical picture of transport -- a framework ideally suited to describe the dynamics of closed quantum systems such as ultra-cold atom experiments -- we show that the exact dynamics of non-interacting fermions and bosons exhibit very different transport properties when the system is set out of equilibrium by removing the particles from half of the lattice. We find that fermions rapidly develop a finite quasi steady-state current reminiscent of electronic transport in nanoscale systems. This result is robust -- it occurs with or without a harmonic confining potential and at zer…
The main properties and methods of describing dipolar and spinor atomic systems, composed of bosonic atoms or molecules, are reviewed. The general approach for the correct treatment of Bose-condensed atomic systems with nonlocal interaction potentials is explained. The approach is applied to Bose-condensed systems with dipolar interaction potentials. The properties of systems with spinor interaction potentials are described. Trapped atoms and atoms in optical lattices are considered. Effective spin Hamiltonians for atoms in optical lattices are derived. The possibility of spintronics with cold…
We theoretically investigate quantum-mechanical dynamics of quasi-one-dimensional boson-fermion mixtures of atomic gases trapped in a toroidal potential, where effective inter-atomic interactions are tunable and affect the dynamics. We especially focus on effects of quantum statistics and many-body correlations beyond the Hartree-Fock (HF) mean-field approximation on the dynamics. In order to predict the dynamics, we utilize the numerical exact diagonalization method and also reproduce the calculation in the HF approximation for comparison. The toroidal gases originally have a rotational symme…
Motivated by recent advance in orbitally tuned Feshbach resonance experiments, we analyze the ground-state phase diagram and related low-energy excitation spectra of a d-wave interacting Bose gas. A two-channel model with d-wave symmetric interactions and background s-wave interactions is adopted to characterize the gas. The ground state is found to show three interesting phases: atomic, molecular, and atomic-molecular superfluidity. Remarkably differently from what was previously known in the p-wave case, the atomic superfluid is found to be momentum-independent in the present d-wave case. Bo…
We analyze various quantum phases of ultracold bosonic atoms in a periodic one dimensional optical superlattice. Our studies have been performed using the finite size density matrix renormalization group (FS-DMRG) method in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Calculations have been carried out for a wide range of densities and the energy shifts due to the superlattice potential. At commensurate fillings, we find the Mott insulator and the superfluid phases as well as Mott insulators induced by the superlattice. At a particular incommensurate density, the system is found to be in the super…
We study the groundstates of cold atomic gases on rotating optical lattices, as described by the Bose-Hubbard model in a uniform effective magnetic field. Mapping the bosons to composite fermions leads to the prediction of quantum Hall fluids that have no counterpart in the continuum. We construct trial wavefunctions for these phases, and perform numerical tests of the predictions of the composite fermion model. Our results establish the existence of strongly correlated phases beyond those in the continuum limit, and provide evidence for a wider scope of the composite fermion approach beyond i…
We investigate the structure of the spectrum of antiferromagnetically coupled spin-1 bosons on a square lattice using degenerate perturbation theory and exact diagonalizations of finite clusters. We show that the superfluid phase develops an Anderson tower of states typical of nematic long-range order with broken SU(2) symmetry.We further show that this order persists into the Mott insulating phase down to zero hopping for one boson per site, and down to a critical hopping for two bosons per site, in agreement with mean-field and Quantum Monte Carlo results. The connection with the transition …
We propose an experimental protocol for using cold atoms to create and probe quantum dimer models, thereby exploring the Pauling-Anderson vision of a macroscopic collection of resonating bonds. This process can allow the study of exotic crystalline phases, fractionalization, topological spin liquids, and the relationship between resonating dimers and superconductivity subjects which have been challenging to address in solid-state experiments. Our key technical development is considering the action of an off-resonant photoassociation laser on large spin atoms localized at the sites of a deep op…
We theoretically investigate the transport properties of cold bosonic atoms in a quasi one-dimensional triple-well potential that consists of two large outer wells, which act as microscopic source and drain reservoirs, and a small inner well, which represents a quantum-dot-like scattering region. Bias and gate "voltages" introduce a time-dependent tilt of the triple-well configuration, and are used to shift the energetic level of the inner well with respect to the outer ones. By means of exact diagonalization considering a total number of six atoms in the triple-well potential, we find diamond…
We study the three-dimensional bosonic t-J model, i.e., the t-J model of "bosonic electrons" at finite temperatures. This model describes a system of cold bosonic atoms with two species in an optical lattice. The model is derived from the Hubbard model for very large on-site repulsive interaction between bosons of same species (hard-core nature) and also strong correlations between different species. The operator B_{xσ} for an atom at the site x with a two-component (pseudo-) spin σ(=1,2) is treated as a hard-core boson operator, and represented by a composite of two slave particles; a spinon …
We report on high-resolution optical spectroscopy of interacting bosonic $^{174}$Yb atoms in deep optical lattices with negligible tunneling. We prepare Mott insulator phases with singly- and doubly-occupied isolated sites and probe the atoms using an ultra-narrow "clock" transition. Atoms in singly-occupied sites undergo long-lived Rabi oscillations. Atoms in doubly-occupied sites are strongly affected by interatomic interactions, and we measure their inelastic decay rates and energy shifts. We deduce from these measurements all relevant collisional parameters involving both clock states, in …
We analyze quantum phase transitions in a system of optical lattice bosons coupled to an array of atomic quantum dots, or pseudospins-1/2. The system parallels the Bose-Hubbard model with a single difference of the direct tunneling between the lattice sites being replaced by an assisted tunneling via coupling to the atomic quantum dots. We calculate the phase diagram of the combined system, numerically within the Gutzwiller ansatz and analytically using the mean-field decoupling approximation. The result of the assisted Bose-Hubbard model is that the Mott-superfluid transition still takes plac…
We study the three-body problem of two ultracold identical bosonic atoms (denoted by $B$) and one extra atom (denoted by $X$), where the scattering length $a_{BX}$ between each bosonic atom and atom $X$ is resonantly large and positive. We calculate the scattering length $a_{\rm ad}$ between one bosonic atom and the shallow dimer formed by the other bosonic atom and atom $X$, and investigate the effect induced by the interaction between the two bosonic atoms. We find that even if this interaction is weak (i.e., the corresponding scattering length $a_{BB}$ is of the same order of the van der Wa…
In high energy and condensed matter physics, particle exchange plays an essential role in the understanding of long-range interactions. For example, the exchange of massive bosons leads to the Yukawa potential. Phonon exchange between electrons gives rise to Cooper pairing in superconductors. When a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of Cs is embedded in a degenerate Fermi gas of Li, we show that interspecies interactions can give rise to an effective trapping potential, damping, and attractive boson-boson interactions mediated by fermions. The latter, related to the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida …
We study the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Bose-Hubbard model at incommensurate densities, which describes a one-dimensional system of interacting bosons whose tunneling is dressed by a dynamical $\mathbb{Z}_2$ field. At commensurate densities, the model is known to host intertwined topological phases, where long-range order coexists with non-trivial topological properties. This interplay between spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) and topological symmetry protection gives rise to interesting fractional topological phenomena when the system is doped to certain incommensurate fillings. In particular, we hereb…
We study the quasiadiabatic dynamics of a one-dimensional system of ultracold bosonic atoms loaded in an optical superlattice. Focusing on a slow linear variation in time of the superlattice potential, the system is driven from a conventional Mott insulator phase to a superlattice-induced Mott insulator, crossing in between a gapless critical superfluid region. Due to the presence of a gapless region, a number of defects depending on the velocity of the quench appear. Our findings suggest a power-law dependence similar to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for intermediate values of the quench rate. F…
We combine theory and experiment to investigate five-body recombination in an ultracold gas of atomic cesium at negative scattering length. A refined theoretical model, in combination with extensive laboratory tunability of the interatomic interactions, enables the five-body resonant recombination rate to be calculated and measured. The position of the new observed recombination feature agrees with a recent theoretical prediction and supports the prediction of a family of universal cluster states at negative $a$ that are tied to an Efimov trimer.
We theoretically investigate zero-temperature magnetic ordering of mixtures of spin-1 (alkali atoms) and spin-0 (alkaline-earth atoms) bosons in a three-dimensional optical lattice. With the single-mode approximation for the spin-1 bosons, we obtain an effective Bose-Hubbard model for describing the heteronuclear mixtures in optical lattices. By controlling the interspecies interactions between alkali and alkaline-earth atoms, we map out complete phase diagrams of the system with both positive and negative spin-dependent interactions for spin-1 atoms, based on bosonic dynamical mean-field theo…
