In this paper we develop a theoretical description of the correlations between ultracold bosons after free expansion from confinement in an optical lattice. We consider the system evolution during expansion and give criteria for a far-field regime. We develop expressions for first and second order two-point correlations based on a variety of commonly used approximations to the many-body state of the system including Bogoliubov, mean-field decoupling, and particle-hole perturbative solution about the perfect Mott-insulator state. Using these approaches we examine the effects of quantum depletion and pairing on the system correlations. Comparison with the directly calculated correlation functions is used to justify a Gaussian form of our theory from which we develop a general three-dimensional formalism for inhomogeneous lattice systems suitable for numerical calculations of realistic experimental regimes.
In this paper we develop a theoretical description of the correlations between ultracold bosons after free expansion from confinement in an optical lattice. We consider the system evolution during expansion and give criteria for a far-field regime. We develop expressions for first and second order two-point correlations based on a variety of commonly used approximations to the many-body state of the system including Bogoliubov, mean-field decoupling, and particle-hole perturbative solution about the perfect Mott-insulator state. Using these approaches we examine the effects of quantum depletion and pairing on the system correlations. Comparison with the directly calculated correlation functions is used to justify a Gaussian form of our theory from which we develop a general three-dimensional formalism for inhomogeneous lattice systems suitable for numerical calculations of realistic experimental regimes.
In the first part of the thesis we develop a theoretical description of the correlations between ultra-cold bosons after free expansion from confinement in an optical lattice. We describe the single particle evolution of the system during expansion and establish criteria for a far-field regime. We develop expressions for first and second order two-point correlations based on a variety of commonly used approximations to the many-body state of the system including: Bogoliubov theory, mean-field decoupling, and particle-hole perturbative expantion about the perfect Mott-insulator state. Using these approaches we examine the effects of quantum depletion and pairing on system correlations. We justify a Gaussian approximation from which we develop a general three-dimensional theoretical formalism for an inhomogeneous lattice system by comparison with the directly calculated correlation functions. \nIn the second part of the thesis we show how the conventional wisdom that increasing tem- perature means decreasing quantum coherence in system can be faulty. We explore a practical example that can be explored in optical lattice experiments. Using finite temperature perturbation theory and exact calculations we show that the short-range coherence of the Mott-insulating phase of bosons in an optical lattice can increase substantially with increasing temperature. We demonstrate that this phenomenon originates from thermally produced defects that can tunnel with ease. Since the near zero temperature coherence properties have been measured with high precision we expect these results to be verifiable in current experiments. \nIn the last part of the thesis we turn our attention to one dimensional Bose gases. We fo- cus on the moderate temperature weakly interacting regime namely the high temperature quasicondensate and quantum decoherent regimes, which we investigate using the stochas- tic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE) formalism. Here we compare the SPGPE results against the Bethe ansatz and a mean-field formalism adapted to the quasicondensate regime. This theory covers a regime not addressed by other formalism.
The density-density correlations of ultracold Bosons released from a two-dimensional square optical lattice are investigated based on the quantum phase field U (1) rotor field. With the effects of the particle number fluctuations and the phase degrees of freedom taken into consideration, the theory can be used to describe the cold atom system with strong interaction. Using this theory, the characteristics of ultracold atom gas in the process in which the superfluid state of optical lattice transits to insulating state, are well described. The results show that in the patterns of the density-density correlations, the continuous diagonal lines gradually transit to scattered peaks. The results match the experimental ones. In addition, the effects of the quantum depletion on the density-density correlation are also included in the result, and the relevant conclusions are also consistent with the existing theoretical and experimental results.
Ultracold bosonic gases in optical lattices are strongly correlated quantum systems similar to solids. The strong correlation between the electrons in a solid on the one hand, and the bosonic atoms in optical lattice on the other, exhibit various quantum phenomena like insulation, conductivity, localization of electrons and atoms, respectively. Controlled by the intensity of the lattice laser, the ultracold bosonic gas can be transferred from a regime with superfluid character for shallow lattices into a regime of strong correlations, the Mott insulator. As an additional external parameter besides the lattice depth, one can generate spatial inhomogeneities by superimposing an additional standing wave (so-called two-color superlattices), which gives rise to localization effects or the formation of a Bose-glass phase. In the present work, numerical simulations are employed in order to investigate characteristic signatures of the quantum phases in the low-energy excitation spectrum of one-dimensional systems. We simulate temporal small amplitude modulations of the optical lattice in analogy to experiments, and evaluate the response of the system from the time-evolved initial state. The lattice systems are described in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. For the evaluation of the time-evolved state, we employ several numerical methods. We analyze systems of small size (6 particles on 6 sites) using an exact time-evolution by integration of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The formulation of an importance truncation scheme enables us to retain only the relevant components of the model space in the strongly correlated regime and, thus, allows for the investigation of systems with 10 particles on 10 sites using exact time-evolution. Based on this method, we present results of the Mott-insulating regime as well as for the Bose-glass phase. Furthermore, we employ particle-hole methods, which allow for the treatment of systems with experimental lattice sizes and particle numbers. Starting from the equation of motion method we adapt the Tamm-Dancoff approximation as well as the random-phase approximation for the occupation number representation of the Bose-Hubbard model. We present results of simulations of up to 50 particles on 50 sites and discuss the impact of the lattice depth on the low-energy excitations (U-resonance). Moreover, the impact of a two-color superlattice and the variation of its amplitude is investigated.
Density-density correlation analysis is a convenient diagnostic tool to reveal the hidden order in the strongly correlated phases of ultracold atoms. We report on a study of the density-density correlations of ultracold bosonic atoms which were initially prepared in a Mott insulator (MI) state in one-dimensional optical lattices. For the atomic gases released from the deep optical lattice, we extracted the normalized density-density correlation function from the atomic density distributions of freely expanded atomic clouds. Periodic bunching peaks were observed in the density-density correlation spectra, as in the case of higher-dimensional lattices. Treating the bosonic gas within each lattice well as a subcondensate without quantum tunneling, we simulated the post-expansion density distribution along the direction of the 1D lattice, and the calculated density-density correlation spectra agreed with our experimental observations.
A first-order type phase transition between Mott lobes has been reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 135302 (2012) for a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of an attractive three-body interaction. We revisit the scenario in systems of ultracold bosons both in one- and two-dimensional lattices using the density matrix renormalization group method and the self-consistent cluster mean-field theory approach, respectively. We show that an unconventional pairing of particles occurs due to the competing repulsive two-body and attractive three-body interactions. This leads to a pair superfluid phase sandwiched between the Mott insulator lobes corresponding to densities density one and three in the strongly interacting regime. This is in contrast to the direct first-order jump as predicted before. Interestingly, the Mott to pair superfluid phase transitions are found to be continuous in nature. We also show that the pair superfluid phase is robust with respect to the ratio between the two- and three-body interaction strengths. In the end, we establish a connection between the Bose-Hubbard model presented in Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 135302 (2012) with a more general Bose-Hubbard model and analyze the fate of the pair superfluid phase in the presence of an external trapping potential.
We study the expansion of bosonic Mott insulators in the presence of an optical lattice after switching off a confining potential. We use the Gutzwiller mean-field approximation and consider two different setups. In the first one, the expansion is restricted to one direction. We show that this leads to the emergence of two condensates with well-defined momenta, and argue that such a construct can be used to create atom lasers in optical lattices. In the second setup, we study Mott insulators that are allowed to expand in all directions in the lattice. In this case, a simple condensate is seen to develop within the mean-field approximation. However, its constituent bosons are found to populate many nonzero momentum modes. An analytic understanding of both phenomena in terms of the exact dispersion relation in the hard-core limit is presented.