The mechanism of fermionic pairing is the key to understanding various phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity and the pseudogap phase in cuprate materials. We study the pair correlations in the attractive Hubbard model using ultracold fermions in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By combining the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the compressibility equation of state, we extract the interacting pair correlation functions and deduce a characteristic length scale of pairs as a function of interaction and density filling. At sufficiently low filling and weak on-site interaction, we observe that the pair correlations extend over a few lattice sites even at temperatures above the superfluid transition temperature.
The quantum dynamics of one-dimensional bosonic Josephson junctions with attractive and repulsive interparticle interactions is studied using the Bose-Hubbard model and by numerically-exact computations of the full many-body Hamiltonian. A symmetry present in the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian dictates an equivalence between the evolution in time of attractive and repulsive Josephson junctions with attractive and repulsive interactions of equal magnitude. The full many-body Hamiltonian does not possess this symmetry and consequently the dynamics of the attractive and repulsive junctions are differen…
We investigate the attractive Hubbard model in infinite spatial dimensions by means of dynamical mean-field theory. Using a continuous-time Monte Carlo algorithm in the Nambu formalism as an impurity solver, we directly deal with the superfluid phase in the population imbalanced system. By calculating the superfluid order parameter, the magnetization, and the density of states, we discuss how the polarized superfluid state is realized in the attractive Hubbard model at quarter filling. We find that a drastic change in the density of states is induced by spin imbalanced populations in the super…
We consider a quasi-one-dimensional model of a two-component Fermi gas at zero temperature on one, two and three-leg attractive-U Hubbard ladders. We construct the grand canonical phase diagram of a two-component spin-polarized gas. We find that the structure of the phase diagram of the attractive-U Hubbard model for two and three leg ladders significantly differs q from the structure of the phase diagram of a single chain. We argue that the single chain model is a special case, and that multichain ladders display qualitative features of the 1D-to-3D crossover, observed in experiments with tra…
We present first-principle numerical calculations for few particle solutions of the attractive Bose-Hubbard model with periodic boundary conditions. We show that the low-energy many-body states found by numerical diagonalization can be written as translational superposition states of compact composite systems of particles. These compact states break the translational symmetry of the problem and their center-of-mass and internal excitations offer simple explanations of the energy spectrum of the full model.
We investigate the attractive Hubbard model in infinite spatial dimensions by combining dynamical mean-field theory with a strong-coupling continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method. By calculating the superfluid order parameter and the density of states, we discuss the stability of the superfluid state. In the intermediate coupling region above the critical temperature, the density of states exhibits a heavy fermion behavior with a quasi-particle peak in the dense system, while a dip structure appears in the dilute system. The formation of the superfluid gap is also addressed.
Motivated by the recent realization of the Haldane model in shaking optical lattice, we investigate the effects of attractive interaction and BEC-BCS crossover in this model at and away from half filling. We show that, contrary to the usual s-wave BEC-BCS crossover in the lattice, a topological superfluid with Chern number C=2 appears in an extended region of phase space for intermediate strength of the attractive interaction in the interaction-density plane. When inversion symmetry is broken, a new gapless topological state is realized. We also investigate the fluctuations in these superfluid…
By means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations implemented with a two-loop update scheme, the finite-temperature phase diagram of a three-body constrained attractive Bose lattice gas is investigated. The nature of the thermal phase transitions around the dimer superfluid and the atomic superfluid is unveiled. We find that the $Z_2$ symmetry-breaking transitions between these two superfluid phases are of first order even at nonzero temperatures. More interestingly, the thermal transition from the dimer superfluid to the normal fluid is found to be consistent with the Kosterlitz-Thouless type but g…
By means of the method of the effective potential, the phase transitions from the Mott insulating state to either the atomic or the dimer superfluid state in the three-body constrained attractive Bose lattice gas are analyzed. Due to the appearance of the Feshbach resonance coupling between the two kinds of order parameters in the derived effective potential function, it is found that the continuous Mott insulator-to-superfluid transitions can be preempted by first-order ones. Since the employed approach can provide accurate predictions of phase boundaries in the strong coupling limit, where t…
Based on the two-dimensional (2D) attractive Fermi-Hubbard model with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the SOC strength and Zeeman field dependences of the phase diagram are investigated by calculating the pairing gap self-consistently. The results reveal that the phase transition from the BCS superfluid to the topological superfluid happens under proper Zeeman field strength and SOC strength. In particular, in contrast to the BCS superfluid decreasing monotonically as the SOC strength increasing, the topological superfluid region shows a dome with the SOC strength increasing. An optimal regi…
We study the effects of an attractive three body interaction potential on a spin-1 ultracold Bose gas using mean field approach (MFA). For an antiferromagnetic (AF) interaction, the third MI lobe is predominantly affected, where it completely engulfs the second and the fourth MI lobes at large values of the interaction strength. Albeit no significant change is observed beyond the fourth MI lobe. The formation of the spin singlet (nematic) MI phase and the different order of phase transitions to the SF phase have been carefully scrutinized with the help of spin eigenvalues and spin nematic orde…
We obtain the complete quantum phase diagram of bosons on a two-leg ladder in the presence of attractive onsite and repulsive interchain nearest-neighbor interactions by imposing the onsite three-body constraint. We find three distinct phases; namely, the atomic superfluid (ASF), dimer superfluid (DSF), and the dimer rung insulator (DRI). In the absence of the interchain nearest-neighbor repulsion, the system exhibits a transition from the ASF to the DSF phase with increasing onsite attraction. However, the presence of the interchain nearest-neighbor repulsion stabilizes a gapped DRI phase, wh…
The effect of nearest-neighbor repulsion on the ground-state phase diagrams of three-body constrained attractive Bose lattice gases is explored numerically. When the repulsion is turned on, in addition to the uniform Mott insulating state and two superfluid phases (the atomic and the dimer superfluids), a dimer checkerboard solid state appears at unit filling, where boson pairs form a solid with checkerboard structure. We find also that the first-order transitions between the uniform Mott insulating state and the atomic superfluid state can be turned into the continuous ones as the repulsion i…
We demonstrate that a kind of highly excited state of strongly attractive Hubbard model, named of Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state, can be realized in the spin-1/2 Fermi optical lattice system by a sudden switch of interaction from the strongly repulsive regime to the strongly attractive regime. In contrast to the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model, such a state is the lowest scattering state with no pairing between attractive fermions. With the aid of Bethe-ansatz method, we calculate energies of both the Fermi Tonks-Girardeau gas and the Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state of spin-1…
We use microscopic Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism to explore the ground-state phase diagram of the single-band attractive Hofstadter-Hubbard model on a square lattice. We show that the interplay between the Hofstadter butterfly and superfluidity breaks spatial symmetry, and gives rise to stripe-ordered superfluid and supersolid phases in large parameter spaces. We also discuss the effects of a trapping potential and comment on the viability of observing stripe-ordered phases with cold Fermi gases.
We use cluster dynamical mean field theory to study the phase diagram of the square lattice bilayer Hubbard model with an interlayer interaction. The layers are populated by two-component fermions, and the densities in both layers and the strength of the interactions are varied. We find that an attractive interlayer interaction can induce a checkerboard density ordered phase and superfluid phases, with either interlayer or intralayer pairing. Remarkably, the latter phase does not require an intralayer interaction to be present: it can be attributed to an induced attractive interaction caused b…
We study fermionic superfluidity in strongly anisotropic optical lattices with attractive interactions utilizing the cluster DMFT method, and focusing in particular on the role of non-local quantum fluctuations. We show that non-local quantum fluctuations impact the BCS superfluid transition dramatically. Moreover, we show that exotic superfluid states with delicate order parameter structure, such as the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase driven by spin population imbalance, can emerge even in the presence of such strong fluctuations.
We study the attractive fermionic Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice using determinantal quantum Monte Carlo simulations. By increasing the interaction strength U (relative to the hopping parameter t) at half-filling and zero temperature, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition at 5.0 < U_c/t < 5.1 from a semi-metal to a phase displaying simultaneously superfluid behavior and density order. Doping away from half-filling, and increasing the interaction strength at finite but low temperature T, the system always appears to be a superfluid exhibiting a crossover between a BCS and a mole…
The influence of the Zeeman magnetic field ($h$) on the ground state evolution of superfluid properties from the weak coupling (BCS like) to the strong coupling limit of tightly bound local pairs (LP) with increasing attraction has been studied. The analysis was carried out within the spin-polarized attractive Hubbard model, for a fixed number of particles and a $d=3$ simple cubic lattice. The broken symmetry Hartree approximation was used. For strong attraction and in the dilute limit, the homogeneous magnetized superconducting phase (SC$_M$) was found in the $(h-|U|)$ and ($P-|U|$) diagrams.
We study the attractive SU($N$) Hubbard model with particle-hole symmetry. The model is defined on a bipartite lattice with the number of sites $N_A$ $(N_B)$ in the $A$ $(B)$ sublattice. We prove three theorems that allow us to identify the basic ground-state properties: the degeneracy, the fermion number, and the SU($N$) quantum number. We also show that the ground state exhibits charge density wave order when $|N_A-N_B|$ is macroscopically large. The theorems hold for a bipartite lattice in any dimension, even without translation invariance.
We investigate the trion formation and the effective trionic properties in the attractive Hubbard model with three fermionic colors using exact diagonalization. The crossover to the trionic regime with colorless compound fermions upon increasing strength of the onsite attraction parameter U features smoothly evolving ground state properties and exhibits clear similarities to the BCS/BEC-crossover for two colors. In the excitation spectrum, there is a clear gap opening between a band of well-defined trions and excitations of broken-up trions at U_c ~ 1.8t. This picture remains the same away fro…
The attractive Fermi-Hubbard model is the simplest theoretical model for studying pairing and superconductivity of fermions on a lattice. Although its s-wave pairing symmetry excludes it as a microscopic model for high-temperature superconductivity, it exhibits much of the relevant phenomenology, including a short-coherence length at intermediate coupling and a pseudogap regime with anomalous properties. Here we study an experimental realization of this model using a two-dimensional (2D) atomic Fermi gas in an optical lattice. Our site-resolved measurements on the normal state reveal checkerbo…
We revisit the one-dimensional attractive Hubbard model by using the Bethe-ansatz based density-functional theory and density-matrix renormalization method. The ground-state properties of this model are discussed in details for different fillings and different confining conditions in weak-to-intermediate coupling regime. We investigate the ground-state energy, energy gap, and pair-binding energy and compare them with those calculated from the canonical Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer approximation. We find that the Bethe-ansatz based density-functional theory is computationally easy and yields an ac…
The driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model can be experimentally realized with either negative or positive onsite detunings, inter-site hopping energies, and onsite interaction energies. Here we use one-dimensional matrix product density operators to perform a fully quantum investigation of the dependence of the non-equilibrium steady states of this model on the signs of these parameters. Due to a symmetry in the Lindblad master equation, we find that simultaneously changing the sign of the interaction energies, hopping energies, and chemical potentials leaves the local boson number distributio…
We provide a new perspective on the pseudogap physics for attractive fermions as described by the three-dimensional Hubbard model. The pseudogap in the single-particle spectral function, which occurs for temperatures above the critical temperature $T_c$ of the superfluid transition, is often interpreted in terms of preformed, uncondensed pairs. Here we show that the occurrence of pseudogap physics can be consistently understood in terms of local excitations which lead to a splitting of the quasiparticle peak for sufficiently large interaction. This effect becomes prominent at intermediate and …
We study the interplay between the Hofstadter butterfly, strong interactions and Zeeman field within the mean-field Bogoliubov-de Gennes theory in real space, and explore the ground states of the attractive single-band Hofstadter-Hubbard Hamiltonian on a square lattice, including the exotic possibility of imbalanced vector potentials. We find that the cooperation between the vector potential and superfluid order breaks the spatial symmetry of the system, and flourish stripe-ordered Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-like superfluid and supersolid phases that can be distinguished and chara…
We scrutinize the real-frequency structure of the self-energy in the superconducting state of the attractive Hubbard model within the dynamical mean-field theory. Within the strong-coupling superconducting phase which has been understood in terms of the Bose-Einstein condensation in the literature, we find two qualitatively different regions crossing over each other. In one region close to zero temperature, the self-energy depends on the frequency only weakly at low energy. On the other hand, in the region close to the critical temperature, the self-energy shows a pole structure. The latter re…
We consider a Fermi gas that is loaded onto a square optical lattice and subjected to a perpendicular artificial magnetic field, and determine its superfluid transition boundary by adopting a BCS-like mean-field approach in momentum space. The multi-band structure of the single-particle Hofstadter spectrum is taken explicitly into account while deriving a generalized pairing equation. We present the numerical solutions as functions of the artificial magnetic flux, interaction strength, Zeeman field, chemical potential, and temperature, with a special emphasis on the roles played by the density…
In addition to the conventional contribution that is directly controlled by the single-particle energy spectrum, the superfluid phase stiffness of a two-component Fermi gas has a geometric contribution that is governed by the quantum metric of the honeycomb's band structure. Here, we take both contributions into account, and construct phase diagrams for the critical superfluid transition temperature as a function of the chemical potential, particle filling, onsite interaction and next-nearest-neighbor hopping. Our theoretical approach is based on a self-consistent solution of the BCS mean-fiel…
We analyze the evolution from the weak coupling (BCS-like limit) to the strong coupling limit of tightly bound local pairs (LP's) in the 2D asymmetric attractive Hubbard model, in the presence of the Zeeman magnetic field ($h$). The broken symmetry Hartree approximation is used. We also apply the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) scenario to determine the phase coherence temperatures. We obtain that for the spin dependent hopping integrals ($t^{\uparrow}\neq t^{\downarrow}$) the homogeneous polarized superfluid (SC$_M$) phase in the ground state for the strong attraction and lower filling can be stabil…
We consider two-component one-dimensional quantum gases at special imbalanced commensurabilities which lead to the formation of multimer (multi-particle bound-states) as the dominant order parameter. Luttinger liquid theory supports a mode-locking mechanism in which mass (or velocity) asymmetry is identified as the key ingredient to stabilize such states. While the scenario is valid both in the continuum and on a lattice, the effects of umklapp terms relevant for densities commensurate with the lattice spacing are also mentioned. These ideas are illustrated and confronted with the physics of t…
Competition between superconductivity and charge order is a recurring theme in contemporary condensed matter physics. This is quintessentially captured in the attractive Hubbard model, a simple theoretical model where the competition can be directly tuned. In previous studies by the current authors, it has been suggested that the Hubbard model maps to an $SO(3)$ non-linear sigma model, where the phase competition becomes manifest. In this article, we rigorously demonstrate this mapping and use it to study thermal disordering of a supersolid. Starting with the attractive Hubbard model in the pr…
Dynamical structure factor and a new method to measure the pairing gap in two-dimensional attractive Fermi-Hubbard model
Centre for Theoretical and Computational Physics, College of Physics, Qingdao University（青岛大学物理学院理论计算物理中心）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理与天文学院）
In this paper we address the behavior of the superfluid transition temperature $T_c$ in the attractive Hubbard model. We study systematically the effects of pairing fluctuations and address all filling fractions over the entire range of attractive interaction strength. While the attractive Hubbard model can be regarded as the generalization of BCS to Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover to a lattice, we find that the BEC limit of this Hubbard model is very different from that of jellium, owing to the strong inter-site repulsion between pairs, which becomes important near half filling whe…
We study the evolution from the weak coupling (BCS-like limit) to the strong coupling limit of tightly bound local pairs (LP's) with increasing attraction, in the presence of the Zeeman magnetic field ($h$) for $d=2$, within the spin-polarized attractive Hubbard model. The broken symmetry Hartree approximation {as well as the} strong coupling expansion are used. We also apply the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) scenario to determine the phase coherence temperatures. For spin independent hopping integrals ($t^{\uparrow}=t^{\downarrow}$), we find no stable homogeneous polarized superfluid (SC$_M$) stat…
