Ulf Bissbort

Artificial graphene with tunable interactions.

We create an artificial graphene system with tunable interactions and study the crossover from metallic to Mott insulating regimes, both in isolated and coupled two-dimensional honeycomb layers. The artificial graphene consists of a two-component spin mixture of an ultracold atomic Fermi gas loaded into a hexagonal optical lattice. For strong repulsive interactions, we observe a suppression of double occupancy and measure a gapped excitation spectrum. We present a quantitative comparison between our measurements and theory, making use of a novel numerical method to obtain Wannier functions for complex lattice structures. Extending our studies to time-resolved measurements, we investigate the equilibration of the double occupancy as a function of lattice loading time.

Emulating solid-state physics with a hybrid system of ultracold ions and atoms.

We propose and theoretically investigate a hybrid system composed of a crystal of trapped ions coupled to a cloud of ultracold fermions. The ions form a periodic lattice and induce a band structure in the atoms. This system combines the advantages of high fidelity operations and detection offered by trapped ion systems with ultracold atomic systems. It also features close analogies to natural solid-state systems, as the atomic degrees of freedom couple to phonons of the ion lattice, thereby emulating a solid-state system. Starting from the microscopic many-body Hamiltonian, we derive the low energy Hamiltonian, including the atomic band structure, and give an expression for the atom-phonon coupling. We discuss possible experimental implementations such as a Peierls-like transition into a period-doubled dimerized state.

Stochastic mean-field theory for the disordered Bose-Hubbard model

We investigate the effect of diagonal disorder on bosons in an optical lattice described by an Anderson-Hubbard model at zero temperature. It is known that within Gutzwiller mean-field theory spatially resolved calculations suffer particularly from finite system sizes in the disordered case, while arithmetic averaging of the order parameter cannot describe the Bose glass phase for finite hopping J>0. Here we present and apply a new stochastic mean-field theory which captures localization due to disorder, includes non-trivial dimensional effects beyond the mean-field scaling level and is applicable in the thermodynamic limit. In contrast to fermionic systems, we find the existence of a critical hopping strength, above which the system remains superfluid for arbitrarily strong disorder.

Stochastic Mean-Field Theory: Method and Application to the Disordered Bose-Hubbard Model at Finite Temperature and Speckle Disorder

We discuss the stochastic mean-field theory (SMFT) method, which is a new approach for describing disordered Bose systems in the thermodynamic limit including localization and dimensional effects. We explicate the method in detail and apply it to the disordered Bose-Hubbard model at finite temperature, with on-site box disorder, as well as experimentally relevant unbounded speckle disorder. We find that disorder-induced condensation and re-entrant behavior at constant filling are only possible at low temperatures, beyond the reach of current experiments [M. Pasienski, D. McKay, M. White, and B. DeMarco, e-print arXiv:0908.1182]. Including off-diagonal hopping disorder as well, we investigate its effect on the phase diagram in addition to pure on-site disorder. To make connection to present experiments on a quantitative level, we also combine SMFT with an LDA approach and obtain the condensate fraction in the presence of an external trapping potential.

Effective multibody-induced tunneling and interactions in the Bose-Hubbard model of the lowest dressed band of an optical lattice

We construct the effective lowest-band Bose-Hubbard model incorporating interaction-induced on-site correlations. The model is based on ladder operators for local correlated states, which deviate from the usual Wannier creation and annihilation, allowing for a systematic construction of the most appropriate single-band low-energy description in the form of the extended Bose-Hubbard model. A formulation of this model in terms of ladder operators not only naturally contains the previously found effective multibody interactions, but also contains multibody-induced single-particle tunneling, pair tunneling, and nearest-neighbor interaction processes of higher orders. An alternative description of the same model can be formulated in terms of occupation-dependent Bose-Hubbard parameters. These multiparticle effects can be enhanced using Feshbach resonances, leading to corrections which are well within experimental reach and of signi?cance to the phase diagram of ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. We analyze the energy-reduction mechanism of interacting atoms on a local lattice site and show that this cannot be explained only by a spatial broadening of Wannier orbitals on a single-particle level, which neglects correlations.

Quantum interpolation for high-resolution sensing

Significance Nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging enabled by quantum sensors is a promising path toward the outstanding goal of determining the structure of single biomolecules at room temperature. We develop a technique, which we name “quantum interpolation,” to improve the frequency resolution of these quantum sensors far beyond limitations set by the experimental controlling apparatus. The method relies on quantum interference to achieve high-fidelity interpolation of the quantum dynamics between hardware-allowed time samplings, thus allowing high-resolution sensing. We demonstrate over two orders of magnitude resolution gains, and discuss applications of our work to high-resolution nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging. Recent advances in engineering and control of nanoscale quantum sensors have opened new paradigms in precision metrology. Unfortunately, hardware restrictions often limit the sensor performance. In nanoscale magnetic resonance probes, for instance, finite sampling times greatly limit the achievable sensitivity and spectral resolution. Here we introduce a technique for coherent quantum interpolation that can overcome these problems. Using a quantum sensor associated with the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond, we experimentally demonstrate that quantum interpolation can achieve spectroscopy of classical magnetic fields and individual quantum spins with orders of magnitude finer frequency resolution than conventionally possible. Not only is quantum interpolation an enabling technique to extract structural and chemical information from single biomolecules, but it can be directly applied to other quantum systems for superresolution quantum spectroscopy.

Creating exotic condensates via quantum-phase-revival dynamics in engineered lattice potentials

In the field of ultracold atoms in optical lattices a plethora of phenomena governed by the hopping energy J and the interaction energy U have been studied in recent years. However, the trapping potential typically present in these systems sets another energy scale and the effects of the corresponding time scale on the quantum dynamics have rarely been considered. Here we study the quantum collapse and revival of a lattice Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in an arbitrary spatial potential, focusing on the special case of harmonic confinement. Analyzing the time evolution of the single-particle density matrix, we show that the physics arising at the (temporally) recurrent quantum phase revivals is essentially captured by an effective single-particle theory. This opens the possibility of preparing exotic nonequilibrium condensate states with a large degree of freedom by engineering the underlying spatial lattice potential.

Localization of correlated fermions in optical lattices with speckle disorder

Strongly correlated fermions in three- and two-dimensional optical lattices with experimentally realistic speckle disorder are investigated. We extend and apply the statistical dynamical mean-field theory, which treats local correlations non-perturbatively, to incorporate on-site and hopping-type randomness on equal footing. Localization due to disorder is detected via the probability distribution function of the local density of states. We obtain a complete paramagnetic ground state phase diagram for experimentally realistic parameters and find a strong suppression of the correlation-induced metal insulator transition due to disorder. Our results indicate that the Anderson-Mott and the Mott insulator are not continuously connected due to the specific character of speckle disorder. Furthermore, we discuss the effect of finite temperature on the single-particle spectral function.

Minimal motor for powering particle motion from spin imbalance

We introduce a minimalistic quantum motor for coupled energy and particle transport. The system is composed of two spins, each coupled to a different bath and to a particle which can move on a ring consisting of three sites. We show that the energy flowing from the baths to the system can be partially converted to perform work against an external driving, even in the presence of moderate dissipation. We also analytically demonstrate the necessity of coupling between the spins. We suggest an experimental realization of our model using trapped ions or quantum dots.

Oscillation and decay of particle current due to a quench and dephasing in an interacting fermionic system

Abstract We study the response of a particle current to dissipative dephasing in an interacting, few body fermionic lattice system. The particles are prepared in the many-body interacting ground state in presence of an artificial magnetic gauge field, which is subsequently quenched to zero. The initial current decays non-trivially in the dissipative environment and we explore the emerging dynamics, time scales and their dependence on the various system parameters.