Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) plays an essential role in many exotic and interesting phenomena in condensed matter physics. In neutral-atom-based quantum simulations, synthetic SOC constitutes a key enabling element. The strength of SOC realized so far is limited by various reasons or constraints. This work reports tunable SOC synthesized with a gradient magnetic field (GMF) for atoms in a harmonic trap. Nearly ten-fold enhancement is observed when the GMF is modulated near the harmonic-trap resonance in comparison with free-space atoms. A theory is developed that well explains the experimental results. Our work offers a clear physical insight into and analytical understanding of how to tune the strength of atomic SOC synthesized with GMF using harmonic trap resonance.
We have considered the orbital-free approximation of the kinetic energy functional to investigate the zero temperature properties of dilute harmonically trapped two component Fermi gas at unitarity. It is shown that our approach provides a realible and inexpensive method to study superfluid strongly interacting dilute Fermi gases.
We study a system of ultra-cold atoms possessing long range interaction (e.g. dipole-dipole interaction) in a one dimensional optical lattice in the presence of a confining harmonic trap. We have shown that for large enough on-site and nearest neighbor interaction a supersolid phase can be stabilized, consistent with the previous Quantum Monte Carlo and DMRG results for the homogeneous system. Due to the external harmonic trap potential the supersolid phase coexists with other phases. We emphasize on the experimental signatures of the various ground state phases in the presence of a trap.
In this work, we study parametric resonances in an elongated cigar-shaped BEC in a combined harmonic trap and a time dependent optical lattice by using numerical and analytical techniques. We show that there exists a relative competition between the harmonic trap which tries to spatially localize the BEC and the time varying optical lattice which tries to delocalize the BEC. This competition gives rise to parametric resonances (collapse and revival of the oscillations of the BEC width). Parametric resonances disappear when one of the competing factors i.e strength of harmonic trap or the stren…
We establish a new geometric wave function that combined with a variational principle efficiently describes a system of bosons interacting in a one-dimensional trap. By means of a a combination of the exact wave function solution for contact interactions and the asymptotic behaviour of the harmonic potential solution we obtain the ground state energy, probability density and profiles of a few boson system in a harmonic trap. We are able to access all regimes, ranging from the strongly attractive to the strongly repulsive one with an original and simple formulation.
We study the solitonic Lieb II branch of excitations in one-dimensional Bose-gas in homogeneous and trapped geometry. Using Bethe-ansatz Lieb's equations we calculate the "effective number of atoms" and the "effective mass" of the excitation. The equations of motion of the excitation are defined by the ratio of these quantities. The frequency of oscillations of the excitation in a harmonic trap is calculated. It changes continuously from its "soliton-like" value ω_h/\sqrt{2} in the high density mean field regime to ω_h in the low density Tonks-Girardeau regime with ω_h the frequency of the har…
We investigate theoretically the phase diagram of a spin-orbit coupled Bose gas in two-dimensional harmonic traps. We show that discrete Landau levels develop at strong spin-orbit coupling. For a weakly interacting gas, quantum states with skyrmion lattice patterns emerge spontaneously and preserve either parity symmetry or combined parity-time-reversal symmetry. These phases can be readily observed by experimentally engineering spin-orbit coupling and interatomic interactions for a cloud of $^{87}$Rb atoms in a highly oblate trap.
For two-dimensional (2D) atomic Fermi gases in harmonic traps, the SO(2,1) symmetry is broken by the interatomic interaction explicitly via the contact correlation operator. Consequently the frequency of the breathing mode $ω_B$ of the 2D Fermi gas can be different from $2ω_0$, with $ω_0$ the trapping frequency of harmonic potentials. At zero temperature, we use the sum rules of density correlation functions to yield upper bounds for $ω_B$. We further calculate $ω_B$ through the Euler equations in the hydrodynamic regime. The obtained value of $ω_B$ satisfies the upper bounds and shows deviati…
The position and momentum space information entropies of weakly interacting trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates and spin-polarized trapped atomic Fermi gases at absolute zero temperature are evaluated. We find that sum of the position and momentum space information entropies of these quantum systems contain $N$ atoms confined in a $D(\le 3)$-dimensional harmonic trap has a universal form as $ S_t^{(D)} = N(a D - b \ln N) $, where $a \simeq 2.332$ and $b = 2$ for interacting bosonic systems and $a \simeq 1.982$ and $b = 1$ for ideal fermionic systems. These results obey the entropic uncert…
In this work, combining the Bethe ansatz approach with the variational principle, we calculate the ground state energy of the relative motion of a system of two fermions with spin up and down interacting via a delta-function potential in a 1D harmonic trap. Our results show good agreement with the analytical solution of the problem, and provide a starting point for the investigation of more complex few-body systems where no exact theoretical solution is available.
We present accurate results based on Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of two-component bosonic systems on a square lattice and in the presence of an external harmonic confinement. Starting from hopping parameters and interaction strengths which stabilize the Ising antiferromagnetic phase in the homogeneous case and at half integer filling factor, we study how the presence of the harmonic confinement challenge the realization of such phase. We consider realistic trapping frequencies and number of particles, and establish under which conditions, i.e. total number of particles and population imbal…
We consider quantum quenches of harmonically trapped one-dimensional bosons from repulsive to attractive interactions, and the resulting breathing dynamics of the so-called `super-Tonks-Girardeau' (sTG) state. This state is highly excited compared to the ground state of the attractive gas, and is the lowest eigenstate where the particles are not bound or clustered. We analyze the dynamics from a spectral point of view, identifying the relevant eigenstates of the interacting trapped many-body system, and analyzing the nature of these quantum eigenstates. To obtain explicit eigenspectra, we use …
The elementary excitations for a BEC trapped by means of an isotropic harmonic oscillator are studied in the present work. The analysis of these perturbations is done in the context of the Bogoliubov equations and not resorting to the hydrodynamic version. The comparison between these two approaches will allow us to deduce a parameter explaining the role that the scattering length and the trap play in the way in which the frequency of these elementary excitations acquires information about the angular momentum of the corresponding solutions. It will be shown that outside the validity realm of …
We investigate a one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in a parametrically driven global harmonic trap. The delicate interplay of both the local atom interaction and the global driving allows to control the dynamical stability of the trapped quantum many-body state. The mechanism is illustrated for weak interaction by a discretized Gross-Pitaevskii equation within a Gaussian variational ansatz, yielding to a Mathieu equation for the condensate width. The parametric resonance condition can be tuned by the atom interaction strength. For stronger interaction, this mechanism is confirmed by results o…
We directly compare the mean-field and the many-body approach in a one-dimensional Bose system in a harmonic trap. Both contact and dipolar interactions are considered. We propose a multi-atom version of the phase imprinting method to generate dark solitons in the system. We begin with a general analysis of system dynamics and observe the emergence of a dark soliton and a shock wave. Center of mass and soliton motion become decoupled because the shock wave oscillates with the trap frequency and soliton does not. A detailed investigation of frequencies reveals significant differences between re…
We study harmonically trapped ultracold Bose gases with attractive interparticle interactions under external rotation in three spatial dimensions and determine the critical value of the attraction strength where the gas collapses as a function of the rotation frequency. To this end we examine the stationary state in the corotating frame with a many-body approach as well as within the Gross-Pitaevskii theory of systems in traps with different anisotropies. In contrast to recently reported results [N. A. Jamaludin, N. G. Parker, and A. M. Martin, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{77}, 051603(R) (2008)], we f…
Conjectures are made for the ground state energy of a large spin 1/2 Fermion system trapped in a 1D harmonic trap with delta function interaction. States with different spin J are separately studied. The Thomas-Fermi method is used as an effective test for the conjecture.
In these two papers, we solve the N body 1D harmonically trapped spinless Boson or spin 1/2 Fermions with repulsive delta function interaction in the limit $N\to \infty$.
The behaviors of a rapid rotating Bose-Einstein condensate under extreme elongation in a 2D anisotropic harmonic plus quartic trap are investigated. Due to the quartic trap, the system remains stable at high rotating velocity, $Ω\geq ω_\perp$ ($ω_\perp$ is the radial harmonic trap frequency), and vortex lattices form even in the absence of the repulsive s-wave interaction ($g$). When $g$ is present, the interplay between $g$ and the quartic trap potential can lead to rich vortex lattice transition states as a function of $Ω$, to which vortex lattices vanish eventually at some higher $Ω$.
We investigate the fast transport of an atom or a packet of atoms by different kinds of non-harmonic traps including power-law traps. The study is based on the reverse engineering method. Exact results are obtained and applied to design robust transport protocols. The optimization of the transport trajectory is performed with classical trajectories, and remains valid for the transport of a wave packet.
We report new results for the Thomas-Fermi groundstate and the quadrupolar modes of density oscillations of a spin- polarized dipolar interacting Bose-Einstein condensate for the case when the external magnetic field is not orientated parallel to a principal axis of a harmonic anisotropic trap.
We use harmonically trapped systems to find the leading gradient corrections of the supefluid local density approximation (SLDA) - a density functional theory (DFT) describing the unitary Fermi gas (UFG). We find the leading order correction to be negative, and predict the q^2 coefficient of the long-range static response c = 1.5(3) - a factor of two smaller than predicted by mean-field theory - thereby establishing a new and experimentally measurably universal constant.
We discuss the dynamics of sympathetic cooling of atomic mixtures in realistic, nonlinear trapping potentials using a microscopic effective model developed earlier for harmonic traps. We contrast the effectiveness of different atomic traps, such as Ioffe-Pritchard magnetic traps and optical dipole traps, and the role their intrinsic nonlinearity plays in speeding up or slowing down thermalization between the two atomic species. This discussion includes cases of configurations with lower effective dimensionality. From a more theoretical standpoint, our results provide the first exploration of a…
We construct a connection of the ultracold atomic system in a harmonic trap with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling to the quantum Rabi-like model. By mapping the trapped atomic system to a Rabi-like model, we can get the exact solution of the Rabi-like model following the methods to solve the quantum Rabi model. The existence of such a mapping implies that we can study the basic model in quantum optics by using trapped atomic gases with spin-orbit coupling.
We obtain second and higher order corrections to the shift of the Bose-Einstein critical temperature due to finite-size effects. The confinement is that of a harmonic trap with general anisotropy. Numerical work shows the high accuracy of our expressions. We draw attention to a subtlety involved in the consideration of experimental values of the critical temperature in connection with analytical expressions for the finite-size corrections.
We compute the pair entanglement between two interacting bosons in a two dimensional (2D)isotropic harmonic trap. The interaction potential is modeled by a 2D regularized pseudo-potential. By analytically decomposing the wave function into the single particle basis, we show the dependency of the pair entanglement on the scattering length. Our results turn out to be in good agreements with earlier results using a quasi-2D geometry.
We study the fast transport of a particle or a Bose-Einstein condensate in a harmonic potential. An exact expression for the final excitation energy in terms of the Fourier transform of the trap acceleration is used to engineer optimal transport protocols (with no final excitation) that are robust with respect to spring-constant errors. The same technique provides a way to design the simultaneous and robust transport of a few non-interacting species that experience different harmonic trap frequencies in the same trap.
We consider controlled collisions between two ultracold atoms guided by external harmonic potentials. We derive analytical solutions of the Schroedinger equation for this system, and investigate the properties of eigenergies and eigenstates for different trap geometries as a function of a trap separation and of the scattering length. When varying the trap separation the energy spectrum exhibits avoided crossings, corresponding to trap-induced shape resonances. Introducing an energy-dependent scattering length we investigate the behavior of the system in the vicinity of a magnetic Feshbach reso…
The time evolution of a single particle in a harmonic trap with time dependent frequency omega(t) is well studied. Nevertheless here we show that, when the harmonic trap is opened (or closed) as function of time while keeping the adiabatic parameter mu = [d omega(t)/dt]/omega(t)^2 fixed, a sharp transition from an oscillatory to a monotonic exponential dynamics occurs at mu = 2. At this transition point the time evolution has a third-order exceptional point (EP) at all instants. This situation, where an EP of a time-dependent Hermitian Hamiltonian is obtained at any given time, is very differe…
Employing a short-range two-channel description we derive an analytic model of atoms in isotropic and anisotropic harmonic traps at a Feshbach resonance. On this basis we obtain a new parameterization of the energy-dependent scattering length which differs from the one previously employed. We validate the model by comparison to full numerical calculations for Li-Rb and explain quantitatively the experimental observation of a resonance shift and trap-induced molecules in exited bands. Finally, we analyze the bound state admixture and Landau-Zener transition probabilities.
We explore the two-body spectra of spin-$1/2$ fermions in isotropic harmonic traps with external spin-orbit potentials and short range two-body interactions. Using a truncated basis of total angular momentum eigenstates, non-perturbative results are presented for experimentally realistic forms of the spin-orbit coupling: a pure Rashba coupling, Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings in equal parts, and a Weyl-type coupling. The technique is easily adapted to bosonic systems and other forms of spin-orbit coupling.
We consider a two-dimensional system of harmonically trapped particles with pseudo-spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ degree of freedom. This degree of freedom is coupled to the particle's momentum via the so-called Rashba spin-orbit interaction. We present our numerical results for a single-particle and few-particle systems, assuming the repulsive interparticle interaction to be of zero range.
We investigate fast transport and spin manipulation of tunable spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in a moving harmonic trap. Motivated by the concept of "shortcuts to adiabaticity", we design inversely the time-dependent trap position and spin-orbit coupling strength. By choosing appropriate boundary conditions we obtain fast transport and spin flip simultaneously. The non-adiabatic transport and relevant spin dynamics are illustrated with numerical examples, and compared with the adiabatic transport with constant spin-orbit-coupling strength and velocity. Moreover, the influence of …
We investigate the possibility to form high fidelity atomic Fock states by gradual reduction of a quasi one dimensional trap containing spin polarized fermions or strongly interacting bosons in the Tonk-Girardeau regime. Making the trap shallower and simultaneously squeezing it can lead to the preparation of an ideal atomic Fock state as one approaches either the sudden or the adiabatic limits. Nonetheless, the fidelity of the resulting state is shown to exhibit a non-monotonic behaviour with the time scale in which the trapping potential is changed.
Exactly solvable model of two Rydberg-dressed atoms moving in a quasi-two-dimensional harmonic trap is introduced and its properties are investigated. Depending on the strength of inter-particle interactions and the critical range of the potential, the two-particle eigenstates are classified with respect to the excitations of the center-of-mass motion, relative angular momentum, and relative distance variable. Having these solutions in hand, we discuss inter-particle correlations as functions of interaction parameters. We also present a straightforward prescription of how to generalize obtaine…
We study properties of the strongly repulsive Bose gas on one-dimensional incommensurate optical lattices with a harmonic trap, which can be deal with by using the exact numerical method through the Bose-Fermi mapping. We first exploit the phase transition of the hard-core bosons in the optical lattices from superfluid-to-Bose-glass phase as the strength of the incommensurate potential increases. Then we study the dynamical properties of the system after suddenly switching off the harmonic trap. We calculate the one-particle density matrices, momentum distributions, the natural orbitals and th…
We study energy levels of two heteronuclear molecules moving in a spherically symmetric harmonic trap. A role of electric dipole interactions is compared and contrasted with our earlier results (https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00631) for two magnetic dipolar atoms. We stress importance of a rotational energy with its value which is very high compared to the energy of dipolar interaction. We show that dipolar forces do not play a significant role in the ground state of the system under typical experimental conditions. However, there exist excited states that exhibit anticrossings similar to the ones…
We develop an analytical many-body wave function to accurately describe the crossover of a one-dimensional bosonic system from weak to strong interactions in a harmonic trap. The explicit wave function, which is based on the exact two-body states, consists of symmetric multiple products of the corresponding parabolic cylinder functions, and respects the analytically known limits of zero and infinite repulsion for arbitrary number of particles. For intermediate interaction strengths we demonstrate, that the energies, as well as the reduced densities of first and second order, are in excellent a…
We study the magnetic ordering transition for a system of harmonically trapped ultracold fermions with repulsive interactions in a cubic optical lattice, within a real-space extension of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Using a quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver, we establish that antiferromagnetic correlations are signaled, at strong coupling, by an enhanced double occupancy. This signature is directly accessible experimentally and should be observable well above the critical temperature for long-range order. Dimensional aspects appear less relevant than naively expected.
We consider a quantum quench of the trap frequency in a system of bosons interacting through an inverse-square potential and confined in a harmonic trap (the harmonic Calogero model). We determine exactly the initial state in terms of the post-quench eigenstates and derive the time evolution of simple physical observables. Since this model possesses an infinite set of integrals of motion (IoM) that allow its exact solution, a generalised Gibbs ensemble (GGE), i.e. a statistical ensemble that takes into account the conservation of all IoM, can be proposed in order to describe the values of loca…
Within the context of Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory, we study the behavior of superfluid Fermi systems when they pass from a small to a large container. Such systems can be now realized thanks to recent progress in experimental techniques. It will allow to better understand pairing properties at overflow and in general in rapidly varying external potentials.
We calculate the first-order perturbation correction to the ground state energy and chemical potential of a harmonically trapped boson gas with contact interactions about the infinite repulsion Tonks-Girardeau limit. With $c$ denoting the interaction strength, we find that for a large number of particles $N$ the $1/c$ correction to the ground state energy increases as $N^{5/2}$, in contrast to the unperturbed Tonks-Girardeau value that is proportional to $N^2$. We describe a thermodynamic scaling limit for the trapping frequency that yields an extensive ground state energy and reproduces the z…
The ground-state properties of the two-flavored mixture of a few attractive fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap is studied. It is shown that for slightly imbalanced system the pairing between fermions of opposite spins has completely different features that in the balanced case. The fraction of correlated pairs is suppressed by the presence of additional particle and another uncorrelated two-body orbital dominates in the ground-state of the system.
Two identical dipolar atoms moving in a harmonic trap without an external magnetic field are investigated. Using the algebra of angular momentum a semi - analytical solutions are found. We show that the internal spin - spin interactions between the atoms couple to the orbital angular momentum causing an analogue of Einstein - de Haas effect. We show a possibility of adiabatically pumping our system from the s-wave to the d-wave relative motion. The effective spin-orbit coupling occurs at anti-crossings of the energy levels.
We study ground states of two-component condensates in a harmonic trap. We prove that in the strongly coupled and weakly interacting regime, the two components segregate while a symmetry breaking occurs. More precisely, we show that when the intercomponent coupling strength is very large and both intracomponent coupling strengths are small, each component is close to the positive or the negative part of a second eigenfunction of the harmonic oscillator in $\R^2$. As a result, the supports of the components approach complementary half-spaces, and they are not radially symmetric.
We investigate the properties of two interacting ultracold polar molecules described as distinguishable quantum rigid rotors, trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic potential. The molecules interact via a multichannel two-body contact potential, incorporating the short-range anisotropy of intermolecular interactions including dipole-dipole interaction. The impact of external electric and magnetic fields resulting in Stark and Zeeman shifts of molecular rovibrational states is also investigated. Energy spectra and eigenstates are calculated by means of the exact diagonalization. The importance a…
We study harmonically trapped one-dimensional atoms subjected to an equal combination of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling induced by Raman transition. We first examine the wave function and the degeneracy of the single-particle ground state, followed by a study of two weakly interacting bosons or fermions. For the two-particle ground state, we focus on the effects of the interaction on the degeneracy, the spin density profiles, and the density-density correlation functions. Finally we show how these studies help us to understand the many-body properties of the system.
We analyze the dynamics of two atoms with a short-ranged pair interaction in a one-dimensional harmonic trap with time-dependent frequency. Our analysis is focused on two representative cases: (i) a sudden change of the trapping frequency from one value to another, and (ii) a periodic trapping frequency. In case (i), the dynamics of the interacting and the corresponding non-interacting systems turn out to be similar. In the second case, however, the interacting system can behave quite differently, especially close to parametric resonance. For instance, in the regions where such resonance occur…
We show that the presence of a harmonic trap may in itself lead to many-body localization for cold atoms confined in that trap in a quasi-one-dimensional geometry. Specifically, the coexistence of delocalized phase in the center of the trap with localized region closer to the edges is predicted with the borderline dependent on the curvature of the trap. The phenomenon, similar in its origin to Stark localization, should be directly observed with cold atomic species. We discuss both the spinless and the spinful fermions, for the latter we address Stark localization at the same time as it has no…
We consider the unitary time evolution of a one-dimensional cloud of hard-core bosons loaded on a harmonic trap potential which is slowly released in time with a general ramp $g(t)$. After the identification of a typical length scale $\ell(t)$, related to the time ramp, we focus our attention on the dynamics of the density profile within a first order time-dependent perturbation scheme. In the special case of a linear ramp, we compare the first order predictions to the exact solution obtained through Ermakov-Lewis dynamical invariants. We also obtain an exact analytical solution for a cloud re…
