Tin-Lun Ho

Fragmented and single condensate ground states of spin-1 bose Gas

We show that the ground state of a spin-1 Bose gas with an antiferromagnetic interaction is a fragmented condensate in uniform magnetic fields. The number fluctuations in each spin component change rapidly from being enormous (order N) to exceedingly small (order 1) as the magnetization of the system increases. A fragmented condensate can be turned into a single condensate state by magnetic field gradients. The conditions for existence and method of detecting fragmented states are presented.

Obtaining the phase diagram and thermodynamic quantities of bulk systems from the densities of trapped gases

A long-standing goal of experiments using cold atoms in optical lattices is to simulate the behaviour of strongly correlated electrons in solid-state systems. However, in these experiments, the atoms are confined to spatially inhomogeneous traps, whereas the desired information concerns homogeneous bulk systems. Theoretical work now proposes a way to connect the two types of system.

Fragmentation of Bose-Einstein condensates

We present the theory of bosonic systems with multiple condensates, providing a unified description of various model systems that are found in the literature. We discuss how degeneracies, interactions, and symmetries conspire to give rise to this unusual behavior. We show that as degeneracies multiply, so do the varieties of fragmentation, eventually leading to strongly correlated states with no trace of condensation.

Two-component Bose-Einstein condensates with a large number of vortices

We consider the condensate wave function of a rapidly rotating two-component Bose gas with an equal number of particles in each component. If the interactions between like and unlike species are very similar (as occurs for two hyperfine states of (87)Rb or (23)Na) we find that the two components contain identical rectangular vortex lattices, where the unit cell has an aspect ratio of sqrt[3], and one lattice is displaced to the center of the unit cell of the other. Our results are based on an exact evaluation of the vortex lattice energy in the large angular momentum (or quantum Hall) regime.

High temperature expansion applied to fermions near Feshbach resonance.

We show that, apart from a difference in scale, all of the surprising recently observed properties of a degenerate Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance persist in the high temperature Boltzmann regime. In this regime, the Feshbach resonance is unshifted. By sweeping across the resonance, a thermal distribution of bound states (molecules) can be reversibly generated. Throughout this process, the interaction energy is negative and continuous. We also show that this behavior must persist at lower temperatures unless there is a phase transition as the temperature is lowered. We rigorously demonstrate universal behavior near the resonance.

Phase diagrams of F = 2 spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We show that there are three possible phases for a spin-2 spinor Bose condensate, one more compared to the spin-1 case. The order parameters of these phases are the spontaneous magnetization and the singlet pair amplitude. Current estimates of scattering lengths show that all three phases have realizations in optically trapped alkali atoms. There is also a one-to-one correspondence between the structure of a spin-2 spinor Bose condensate and that of a d-wave BCS superfluid.

Vortices in superfluid fermi gases through the BEC to BCS crossover.

We have analyzed a single vortex at T=0 in a 3D superfluid atomic Fermi gas across a Feshbach resonance. On the BCS side, the order parameter varies on two scales: k(F)(-1)and the coherence length xi, while only variation on the scale of xi is seen away from the BCS limit. The circulating current has a peak value jmax which is a nonmonotonic function of 1/k(F)a(s) implying a maximum critical velocity approximately v(F) at unitarity. The number of fermionic bound states in the core decreases as we move from the BCS to the BEC regime. Remarkably, a bound state branch persists even on the BEC side reflecting the composite nature of bosonic molecules.

Criterion for Bosonic Superfluidity in an Optical Lattice

We show that the current method of determining superfluidity in optical lattices based on a visibly sharp bosonic momentum distribution n(k) can be misleading, for even a normal Bose gas can have a similarly sharp n(k). We show that superfluidity in a homogeneous system can be detected from the so-called visibility (v) of n(k)--that v must be 1 within O(N(-2/3)), where N is the number of bosons. We also show that the T=0 visibility of trapped lattice bosons is far higher than what is obtained in some current experiments, suggesting strong temperature effects and that these states can be normal. These normal states allow one to explore the physics in the quantum critical region.

PAIRING OF FERMIONS WITH ARBITRARY SPIN

Motivated by the recent success of optical trapping of alkali Bose condensate, we have studied the superfluid state of optically trapped alkali fermions, which can have Cooper pairs with total spin

Quasi 1 and 2d Dilute Bose Gas in Magnetic Traps: Existence of Off-Diagonal Order and Anomalous Quantum Fluctuations

J\geq 2