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arXiv:0906.2640 · Physical Review A

Trap-size scaling in confined-particle systems at quantum transitions

Massimo Campostrini B, Ettore Vicari

Published Feb 10, 2010• 64 citations
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Abstract

We develop a trap-size scaling theory for trapped particle systems at quantum transitions. As a theoretical laboratory, we consider a quantum $\mathit{XY}$ chain in an external transverse field acting as a trap for the spinless fermions of its quadratic Hamiltonian representation. We discuss trap-size scaling at the Mott insulator to superfluid transition in the Bose-Hubbard model. We present exact and accurate numerical results for the $\mathit{XY}$ chain and for the low-density Mott transition in the hard-core limit of the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. Our results are relevant for systems of cold atomic gases in optical lattices.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.023606

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•Aug 16, 2013•1 citation
We develop a trap-size scaling theory for trapped particle systems at quantum transitions. As a theoretical laboratory, we consider a quantum XY\mathit{XY}XY chain in an external transverse field acting as a trap for the spinless fermions of its quadratic Hamiltonian representation. We discuss trap-size scaling at the Mott insulator to superfluid transition in the Bose-Hubbard model. We present exact and accurate numerical results for the XY\mathit{XY}XY chain and for the low-density Mott transition in the hard-core limit of the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. Our results are relevant for systems of cold atomic gases in optical lattices.
We study the quantum (zero-temperature) critical behaviors of confined particle systems described by the one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a confining potential, at the Mott insulator to superfluid transitions, and within the gapless superfluid phase. Specifically, we consider the hard-core limit of the model, which allows us to study the effects of the confining potential by exact and very accurate numerical results. We analyze the quantum critical behaviors in the large trap-size limit within the framework of the trap-size scaling (TSS) theory, which introduces a new trap exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}$ to describe the dependence on the trap size. This study is relevant for experiments of confined quasi-1D cold atom systems in optical lattices. At the low-density Mott transition, TSS can be shown analytically within the spinless fermion representation of the hard-core limit. The trap-size dependence turns out to be more subtle in the other critical regions, when the corresponding homogeneous system has a nonzero filling fff, showing an infinite number of level crossings of the lowest states when increasing the trap size. At the n=1n=1n=1 Mott transition, this gives rise to a modulated TSS: The TSS is still controlled by the trap-size exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}$, but it gets modulated by periodic functions of the trap size. Modulations of the asymptotic power-law behavior is also found in the gapless superfluid region, with additional multiscaling behaviors.
We investigate the interplay of temperature and trap effects in particle systems at their quantum critical regime, such as cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices at the transitions between Mott-insulator and superfluid phases. The theoretical framework is provided by the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of an external trapping potential, and the trap-size scaling theory describing the large trap-size behavior at a quantum critical point. We present numerical results for the low-temperature behavior of the particle density and the density-density correlation function at the Mott transitions, and within the gapless superfluid phase, in the hard-core limit.
We study the effects of a power-law trapping potential on the scaling behaviour of the entanglement at the quantum critical point of one-dimensional (1D) lattice particle systems. We compute bipartite von Neumann and Rényi entropies in the presence of the trap and analyse their scaling behaviour with increasing trap size. As a theoretical laboratory, we consider the quantum XY chain in an external transverse field acting as a trap for the spinless fermions of its quadratic Hamiltonian representation. We then investigate confined-particle systems described by the 1D Bose–Hubbard model in the superfluid phase (around the centre of the trap). In both cases conformal field theory predicts logarithmically divergent bipartite entanglement entropies for the homogeneous systems without a trap. The presence of the trapping potential breaks conformal invariance, affecting the critical behaviour of the homogeneous system. Our results show that the bipartite entanglement entropies diverge logarithmically with increasing trap size and present notable scaling behaviours in the trap-size scaling limit.
We investigate the critical behavior of trapped particle systems at the low-temperature superfluid transition. In particular, we consider the three-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a trapping harmonic potential coupled with the particle density, which is a realistic model of cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. We present a numerical study based on quantum Monte Carlo simulations, analyzed in the framework of the trap-size scaling (TSS). We show how the critical parameters can be derived from the trap-size dependencies of appropriate observables, matching them with TSS. This provides a systematic scheme which is supposed to exactly converge to the critical parameters of the transition in the large-trap-size limit. Our numerical analysis may provide a guide for experimental investigations of trapped systems at finite-temperature and quantum transitions, showing how critical parameters may be determined by looking at the scaling of the critical modes with respect to the trap size, i.e., by matching the trap-size dependence of the experimental data with the expected TSS ansatz.
We study some aspects of equilibrium and off-equilibrium quantum dynamics of dilute bosonic gases in the presence of a trapping potential. We consider systems with a fixed number of particles and study their scaling behavior with increasing the trap size. We focus on one-dimensional bosonic systems, such as gases described by the Lieb-Liniger model and its Tonks-Girardeau limit of impenetrable bosons, and gases constrained in optical lattices as described by the Bose-Hubbard model. We study their quantum (zero-temperature) behavior at equilibrium and off equilibrium during the unitary time evolution arising from changes of the trapping potential, which may be instantaneous or described by a power-law time dependence, starting from the equilibrium ground state for an initial trap size. Renormalization-group scaling arguments and analytical and numerical calculations show that the trap-size dependence of the equilibrium and off-equilibrium dynamics can be cast in the form of a trap-size scaling in the low-density regime, characterized by universal power laws of the trap size, in dilute gases with repulsive contact interactions and lattice systems described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The scaling functions corresponding to several physically interesting observables are computed. Our results are of experimental relevance for systems of cold atomic gases trapped by tunable confining potentials.
The Bose-Hubbard model describes the physics of a system of bosonic ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, in which a phase transition is present between a superfluid phase and a Mott insulator one. \nThe exact solution of this Hamiltonian is only feasible to find the ground-state of small systems, while other techniques (as mean-field schemes or quantum Monte Carlo) are necessary to study systems of larger size. \n \nAs a first application, we study the trapped model - relevant for the comparison with current experiments - through an inhomogeneous mean-field scheme. We describe some signatures of the phase crossover between superfluid and Mott insulator. In particular, the visibility of the quasimomentum distribution shows some kinks as a function of the lattice depth; we describe these features and we link them with the ones observed in other works in the literature. \n \nAs a second application, we use quantum Monte Carlo techniques to study the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with long-range interactions and we focus on the appearance of the Haldane insulating phase, distinguishable from the Mott one through the presence of non-local hidden order. \nNon-local correlation functions are also used to describe the difference between the superfluid phase and the Mott insulator one.