Chiara Menotti

Ultracold dipolar gases in optical lattices

This tutorial is a theoretical work, in which we study the physics of ultra-cold dipolar bosonic gases in optical lattices. Such gases consist of bosonic atoms or molecules that interact via dipolar forces, and that are cooled below the quantum degeneracy temperature, typically in the nK range. When such a degenerate quantum gas is loaded into an optical lattice produced by standing waves of laser light, new kinds of physical phenomena occur. Then, these systems realize extended Hubbard-type models, and can be brought to a strongly correlated regime. The physical properties of such gases, dominated by the long-range, anisotropic dipole?dipole interactions, are discussed using the mean-field approximations and exact quantum Monte Carlo techniques (the worm algorithm).

Metastable States of a Gas of Dipolar Bosons in a 2D Optical Lattice

We investigate the physics of dipolar bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice. It is known that due to the long-range character of dipole-dipole interaction, the ground state phase diagram of a gas of dipolar bosons in an optical lattice presents novel quantum phases, like checkerboard and supersolid phases. In this Letter, we consider the properties of the system beyond its ground state, finding that it is characterized by a multitude of almost degenerate metastable states, often competing with the ground state. This makes dipolar bosons in a lattice similar to a disordered system and opens possibilities of using them as quantum memories.

Bose-Einstein condensates in 1D optical lattices

Abstract.We discuss the Bloch-state solutions of the stationary Gross-Pitaevskii equation and of the Bogoliubov equations for a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a one-dimensional optical lattice. The results for the compressibility, effective mass and velocity of sound are analysed as a function of the lattice depth and of the strength of the two-body interaction. The band structure of the spectrum of elementary excitations is compared with the one exhibited by the stationary solutions (“Bloch bands”). Moreover, the numerical calculations are compared with the analytic predictions of the tight binding approximation. We also discuss the role of quantum fluctuations and show that the condensate exhibits 3D, 2D or 1D features depending on the lattice depth and on the number of particles occupying each potential well. We finally show how, using a local density approximation, our results can be applied to study the behaviour of the gas in the presence of harmonic trapping.

Efficient and Robust Initialization of a Qubit Register with Fermionic Atoms

We show that fermionic atoms have crucial advantages over bosonic atoms in terms of loading in optical lattices for use as a possible quantum computation device. After analyzing the change in the level structure of a nonuniform confining potential as a periodic potential is superimposed to it, we show how this structure combined with the Pauli principle and fermion degeneracy can be exploited to create unit occupancy of the lattice sites with very high efficiency.

Pair-supersolid phase in a bilayer system of dipolar lattice bosons.

The competition between tunneling and interactions in bosonic lattice models generates a whole variety of different quantum phases. While, in the presence of a single species interacting via on site interaction, the phase diagram presents only superfluid or Mott insulating phases, for long-range interactions or multiple species, exotic phases such as supersolid or pair-superfluid appear. In this Letter, we show for the first time that the coexistence of effective multiple species and long-range interactions leads to the formation of a novel pair-supersolid phase, namely, a supersolid of composites. We propose a possible implementation with dipolar bosons in a bilayer two-dimensional optical lattice.

Ultracold dipolar gas in an optical lattice: The fate of metastable states

We study the physics of ultracold dipolar bosons in optical lattices. We show that dipole-dipole interactions lead to the appearance of many insulating metastable states. We study the stability and lifetime of these states using a generalization of the instanton theory. We also investigate possibilities to prepare, control, and manipulate these states using time-dependent superlattice modifications and modulations. We show that the transfer from one metastable configuration to another necessarily occurs via superfluid states, but can be controlled fully at the quantum level. We show how the metastable states can be created in the presence of a trapping potential. Our findings open the way toward applications of the metastable states as quantum memories.

Beyond the Landau criterion for superfluidity

According to the Landau criterion for superfluidity, a Bose–Einstein condensate flowing with a group velocity smaller than the sound velocity is energetically stable in the presence of perturbing potentials. We found that this is strictly correct only for vanishingly small perturbations. The superfluid critical velocity strongly depends on the strength and shape of the defect. We quantitatively study, both numerically and with an approximate analytical model, the dynamical response of a condensate flowing against an instantaneously raised spatially periodic defect. We found that the critical velocity vc decreases by increasing the strength of the defect V0, up to a critical value of the defect intensity where the critical velocity vanishes.

Two-body physics in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model

We consider two interacting bosons in a dimerized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) lattice. We identify a rich variety of two-body states. In particular, for open boundary conditions and moderate interactions, edge bound states (EBS) are present even for the dimerization that does not sustain single-particle edge states. Moreover, for large values of the interactions, we find a breaking of the standard bulk-boundary correspondence. Based on the mapping of two interacting particles in one dimension onto a single particle in two dimensions, we propose an experimentally realistic coupled optical fibers setup as quantum simulator of the two-body SSH model. This setup is able to highlight the localization properties of the states as well as the presence of a resonant scattering mechanism provided by a bound state that crosses the scattering continuum, revealing the closed-channel population in real time and real space.

Light scattering by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice

We investigate theoretically light scattering of photons by ultracold atoms in an optical lattice in the linear regime. A full quantum theory for the atom-photon interactions is developed as a function of the atomic state in the lattice along the Mott-insulator-superfluid phase transition, and the photonic-scattering cross section is evaluated as a function of the energy and of the direction of emission. The predictions of this theory are compared with the theoretical results of a recent work on Bragg scattering in time-of-flight measurements [A.M. Rey et al., Phys. Rev. A 72, 023407 (2005)]. We show that, when performing Bragg spectroscopy with light scattering, the photon recoil gives rise to an additional atomic site-to-site hopping, which can interfere with ordinary tunneling of matter waves and can significantly affect the photonic-scattering cross section.

Propagation of sound in a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice

We study the propagation of sound waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice. We find that the velocity of the propagation of sound wave packets decreases with increasing optical lattice depth, as predicted by the Bogoliubov theory. The strong interplay between nonlinearities and the periodicity of the external potential generates phenomena that are not present in the uniform case. Shock waves, for instance, can propagate slower than sound waves, due to the negative curvature of the dispersion relation. Moreover, nonlinear corrections to the Bogoliubov theory appear to be important even with very small density perturbations, inducing a saturation of the amplitude of the sound signal.