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arXiv:0808.1342

Confinement Induced Quantum Phase Transition and Polarization Cooling in a Dipolar Crystal of Polar Molecules

Yi-Ya Tian, Daw-Wei Wang

Published Aug 9, 2008• 0 citations
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Abstract

It is well-known that the liquid properties in a strongly confined system can be very different from their ordinary behaviors in an extended system, due to the competition between the thermal energy and the interaction energy. Here we show that, in a low-dimensional self-assembled dipolar crystal, the parabolic optical confinement potential can also strongly affect the quantum many-body properties in the low temperature regime. For example, by changing the confinement aspect ratio, the bulk of the system can undergo a quantum phase transition between a liquid state and a solid state via a nonmonotonic pattern formation of the domain wall. Furthermore, the entropy of a trapped dipolar crystal can be much larger than the liquid state in the weak dipole limit, indicating an intrinsic polarization cooling mechanism via increasing the external field. These highly correlated confinement effects are very important to the experimental preparation of a self-assembled dipolar crystal using ultracold polar molecules.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0808.1342

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•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations
It is well-known that the liquid properties in a strongly confined system can be very different from their ordinary behaviors in an extended system, due to the competition between the thermal energy and the interaction energy. Here we show that, in a low-dimensional self-assembled dipolar crystal, the parabolic optical confinement potential can also strongly affect the quantum many-body properties in the low temperature regime. For example, by changing the confinement aspect ratio, the bulk of the system can undergo a quantum phase transition between a liquid state and a solid state via a nonmonotonic pattern formation of the domain wall. Furthermore, the entropy of a trapped dipolar crystal can be much larger than the liquid state in the weak dipole limit, indicating an intrinsic polarization cooling mechanism via increasing the external field. These highly correlated confinement effects are very important to the experimental preparation of a self-assembled dipolar crystal using ultracold polar molecules.
We investigate the confinement effects on a two-dimensional mesoscopic (particle number N >200) self-assembled dipolar crystal trapped in a harmonic potential. The ground-state wave function and energy are calculated by diagonalizing the position fluctuations to the quadratic order within the strong-interaction limit. We further investigate the crystal-liquid domain wall boundary as well as the system temperature by changing the confinement aspect ratio and/or dipole moment strength. We find that the entropy of a trapped dipolar crystal can be much larger than the entropy in the liquid state at zero dipole moment, indicating a polarization cooling mechanism during the formation of dipolar crystal when the external field is increased adiabatically. Our results therefore have significant application to the experimental preparation of a self-assembled dipolar crystal using ultracold polar molecules.
We investigate the finite-temperature phase diagram of polar molecules confined in a quasi-two-dimensional geometry by a harmonic potential along the polarization axis. We employ quantum Monte Carlo simulations to explore the strongly correlated regime accessible with current experimental setups. By tuning temperature and confinement strength, we identify a rich set of phases, including normal fluid, superfluid, supersolid, cluster crystal, and bilayer crystal states. Our results reveal the emergence of crystallization upon increasing temperature, highlighting the nontrivial role of thermal fluctuations in dipolar systems. In particular, we show that a bilayer crystal with one molecule per lattice site can be stabilized by varying the confinement strength at fixed interaction. Moreover, we show evidence of layering of superfluid states with phase coherence between the two layers. These findings provide insight into the interplay between interactions, confinement, and temperature in low-dimensional dipolar systems, and suggest new directions for engineering quantum phases with ultracold polar molecules.
We investigate the physics of ultracold dipolar molecules using path-integral quantum Monte Carlo simulations, and construct the complete phase diagram extending from weak to strong interactions and from small to mesoscopic particle numbers. Our calculations predict the formation of self-bound quantum droplets at interaction strengths lower than previous estimates for molecular condensates. Strikingly, we observe that, for stronger interactions, the oblate quantum droplet transitions to a two-dimensional sheet or superfluid membrane with a thickness of a single molecule. As interactions are increased further the system continually loses superfluidity while correlations develop, and is eventually found to undergo a transition to a crystalline monolayer that remains self-bound without external confinement. The spontaneous formation of such two-dimensional phases from a three-dimensional quantum gas is traced back to the peculiar anisotropic form of the dipole-dipole interaction generated by microwave dressing of rotational molecular states. For sufficiently large particle numbers, crystallization takes place for comparably low interaction strengths that do not promote two-body bound states and should thus be observable in ongoing experiments without limitations from three-body recombination.
We study polar molecules in a stack of strongly confined pancake traps. When dipole moments point perpendicular to the planes of the traps and are sufficiently strong, the system is stable against collapse but attractive interaction between molecules in different layers leads to the formation of dipolar chains, analogously to the chaining phenomenon in classical rheological electro- and magnetofluids. We analyze properties of the resulting quantum liquid of dipolar chains and show that only the longest chains undergo Bose-Einstein condensation with a strongly reduced condensation temperature. We discuss several experimental methods for studying chains of polar molecules.
Strongly interacting ultracold dipolar molecules are a rich platform for quantum information and quantum simulation of phenomena relevant to condensed matter systems. This dissertation presents novel theoretical and computational studies of ultracold dipolar molecules relevant to these areas in three broad categories.First, the path integral ground state quantum Monte Carlo method is extended to simulations with both translational and rotational degrees of freedom, including the development of a novel estimator of the elementary excitation energies of a system with these degrees of freedom based on the well known Feynman-Bijl approximation. This is then used to study dipolar molecular ensembles confined to one-dimensional optical lattices. The ground state phase diagram is characterized with both a mean-field method and the aforementioned quantum Monte Carlo method. A quantum phase transition is found for very short optical lattice spacings or very large dipole moments. The prospects for experimentally realizing a system which exhibits this phase transition are discussed.Second, the path integral ground state quantum Monte Carlo method is utilized to study the ground state of dipole molecules confined to two-dimensional optical lattices. On square lattices a crossover from a weakly interacting disordered phase to a strongly interacting striped phase is found for short lattice spacings or large dipole moments. On triangular lattices a crossover between a disordered phase and a completely polarized phase is found, also for short lattice spacings or large dipole moments. The relevance of such simulations to self-assembled dipolar crystals in two dimensions is discussed and simulation results of these systems are presented. Simulations of polarized and harmonically confined molecular systems in two dimensions with translations and rotations are also presented and a realistic interaction potential using highly accurate ab initio quantum chemistry techniques is calculated for LiH--LiH interactions as a preliminary step toward developing a high quality trial wave function for the simulation of systems possessing both translational and rotational degrees of freedom.Finally, several novel applications for dipolar molecules confined to optical lattices are proposed. An experimental realization of a topological phase using 2Sigma^2\\Sigma2Sigma ground state molecules with applied near resonant microwave fields and transverse magnetic fields is proposed. A method to create an array of dipole-coupled two-level molecules exhibiting superradiance and possessing novel spectroscopic properties using 1Sigma^1\\Sigma1Sigma ground state molecules in the combination of a far off-resonant laser field and a moderate magnetic field is proposed. Additionally, a method to create entangled pairs of molecules using closed-shell dipolar molecules immersed in an intense far off-resonant laser field is reviewed and an extension in which parallel optical lattices are merged and molecules are allowed to collide in the presence of a far off-resonant laser field is proposed. Simulation results are presented indicating that a significant amount of entanglement may be generated in such a way in realistic molecular systems.