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arXiv:0807.2426 · Physical Review A

Finite-temperature coherence of the ideal Bose gas in an optical lattice

G. A. Muradyan, J. R. Anglin

Published Nov 21, 2008• 6 citations
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Abstract

In current experiments with cold quantum gases in periodic potentials, interference fringe contrast is typically the easiest signal in which to look for effects of nontrivial many-body dynamics. In order better to calibrate such measurements, we analyze the background effect of thermal decoherence as it occurs in the absence of dynamical interparticle interactions. We study the effect of optical lattice potentials, as experimentally applied, on the condensed fraction of a noninteracting Bose gas in local thermal equilibrium at finite temperatures. We show that the experimentally observed decrease of the condensate fraction in the presence of the lattice can be attributed, up to a threshold lattice height, purely to ideal-gas thermodynamics; conversely, we confirm that sharper decreases in first-order coherence observed in stronger lattices are indeed attributable to many-body physics. Our results also suggest that the fringe visibility ``kinks'' observed in Gerbier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 050404 (2005) may be explained in terms of the competition between increasing lattice strength and increasing mean gas density, as the Gaussian profile of the red-detuned lattice lasers also increases the effective strength of the harmonic trap.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.053628

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In current experiments with cold quantum gases in periodic potentials, interference fringe contrast is typically the easiest signal in which to look for effects of nontrivial many-body dynamics. In order better to calibrate such measurements, we analyze the background effect of thermal decoherence as it occurs in the absence of dynamical interparticle interactions. We study the effect of optical lattice potentials, as experimentally applied, on the condensed fraction of a noninteracting Bose gas in local thermal equilibrium at finite temperatures. We show that the experimentally observed decrease of the condensate fraction in the presence of the lattice can be attributed, up to a threshold lattice height, purely to ideal-gas thermodynamics; conversely, we confirm that sharper decreases in first-order coherence observed in stronger lattices are indeed attributable to many-body physics. Our results also suggest that the fringe visibility ``kinks'' observed in Gerbier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 050404 (2005) may be explained in terms of the competition between increasing lattice strength and increasing mean gas density, as the Gaussian profile of the red-detuned lattice lasers also increases the effective strength of the harmonic trap.
In response to a recent manuscript [cond-mat/0609685] on the analysis of interference patterns produced by ultracold atoms released from an optical lattice, we point out that in the presence of a Bose-Einstein condensate the interference pattern can be strongly modified by interaction effects and the presence of a harmonic trap superimposed on the lattice potential. Our results show that the visibility of the interference pattern is significant only if a sizeable condensate fraction is present in the trap.
Due to their photonic components, exciton-polariton systems provide a convenient platform to study the coherence properties of weakly-interacting Bose gases. In particular, optical interferometry enables the measurement of the first-order coherence function which provides information about the intrinsic correlations of the system. In this paper, we derive a universal curve for the coherent fraction of a noninteracting, equilibrium, homogeneous, two-dimensional Bose gas, with density expressed in units of the observation area, and compare to recent experimental results. Although there is a sharp transition from normal to superfluid phases in the thermodynamic limit, the coherent fraction of the gas varies continuously across this transition due to the finite system size. We find that the theory agrees nearly perfectly with the experimental data in the low-density limit with no free parameters other than the effective temperature, highly constrained by the measurements. At higher density, the experiments are consistent with standard weakly-interacting Bose gas theory. By having a theory that treats both the optical diffraction and Bose coherence, we can clearly see the effect of the quantum statistics on the coherence.
We discuss the experimental signal for the Bose-Einstein condensation of cold atoms in an optical lattice at finite temperature. Instead of using the visibility of the interference pattern via time-of-flight imaging, we show that the momentum-space density profile in the first Brillouin zone, in particular its bimodal distribution, provides an unambiguous signal for the Bose-Einstein condensation. We confirm this point with detailed calculations of the change in the atomic momentum distribution across the condensation phase transition, taking into account both the global trapping potential and the atomic interaction effects.
We study the phase coherence and visibility of trapped atomic condensates on one-dimensional optical lattices, by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We obtain structures in the visibility similar to the kinks recently observed experimentally by Gerbier et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 050404 (2005); 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.050404cond-mat/0507087]. We examine these features in detail and offer a connection to the evolution of the density profiles as the depth of the lattice is increased. Our simulations reveal that, as the interaction strength U is increased, the evolution of superfluid and Mott-insulating domains stall for finite intervals of U. The density profiles do not change with increasing U. We show here that in one dimension the visibility provides unequivocal signatures of the melting of Mott domains with densities larger than 1.
The quantum and thermal fluctuations of the phase are investigated in a cold Bose gas confined by a double well trap. The coherence of the system is discussed in terms of the visibility of interference fringes in both momentum and coordinate space. The visibility is calculated at zero as well as at finite temperature. The thermal fluctuations are shown to affect significantly the transition from the coherent to the incoherent regime even at very low temperatures. The coherence of an array of multiple condensates is also discussed.
We have studied the thermodynamic properties of noninteracting gases in periodic lattice potential at arbitrary integer fillings and compared them with that of ideal homogeneous gases. By deriving explicit expressions for the thermodynamic quantities and performing exact numerical calculations, we have found that the dependence of e.g., entropy and energy on the temperature in the normal phase is rather weak especially at large filling factors. In the Bose condensed phase, their power dependence on the reduced temperature is nearly linear, which is in contrast to that of ideal homogeneous gases. We evaluated the discontinuity in the slope of the specific heat which turned out to be approximately the same as that of the ideal homogeneous Bose (IHB) gas for filling factor ν = 1. The discontinuity i.e. the jump in the heat capacity per particle linearly decreases with increasing ν. These results may serve as a checkpoint for various experiments on optical lattices as well as theoretical studies of weakly interacting Bose systems in periodic potentials being a starting point for perturbative calculations.