Spatial entropy redistribution plays a key role in adiabatic cooling of ultra-cold lattice gases. We show that high-spin fermions with a spatially variable quadratic Zeeman coupling may allow for the creation of an inner spin-1/2 core surrounded by high-spin wings. The latter are always more entropic than the core at high temperatures and, remarkably, at all temperatures in the presence of frustration. Combining thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz with local density approximation, we study the spatial entropy distribution for the particular case of one-dimensional spin-3/2 lattice fermions in the Mott phase. Interestingly, this spatially dependent entropy opens a possible path for an adiabatic cooling technique that, in contrast to previous proposals, would specifically target the spin degree of freedom. We discuss a possible realization of this adiabatic cooling, which may allow for a highly efficient entropy decrease in the spin-1/2 core and help access antiferromagnetic order in experiments on ultracold spinor fermions.
Spatial entropy redistribution plays a key role in adiabatic cooling of ultra-cold lattice gases. We show that high-spin fermions with a spatially variable quadratic Zeeman coupling may allow for the creation of an inner spin-1/2 core surrounded by high-spin wings. The latter are always more entropic than the core at high temperatures and, remarkably, at all temperatures in the presence of frustration. Combining thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz with local density approximation, we study the spatial entropy distribution for the particular case of one-dimensional spin-3/2 lattice fermions in the Mott phase. Interestingly, this spatially dependent entropy opens a possible path for an adiabatic cooling technique that, in contrast to previous proposals, would specifically target the spin degree of freedom. We discuss a possible realization of this adiabatic cooling, which may allow for a highly efficient entropy decrease in the spin-1/2 core and help access antiferromagnetic order in experiments on ultracold spinor fermions.
Institut fu¨r Quantenoptik, Leibniz Universita¨t Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany(Dated: September 15, 2010)We propose a cooling scheme for two-component fermions in optical lattices that employs theinternal structure of high-spin Fermi gases. Adiabatically changing the quadratic Zeeman couplingfrom a uniform distribution to a space dependent one allows for the creation of an inner spin-1/2 coresurrounded by spin-S wings. We show that, due to frustration, spin-S regions act via spin-changingcollisions as effective entropy absorbers for the spin-1/2 core with increasing efficiency at lowertemperatures and higher dimensions. We illustrate our scheme explicitly on 1D spin-3/2 fermions,showing that the entropy of the spin-1/2 Mott region can be significantly reduced. Our findingssuggest that the proposed method can be highly efficient, opening a feasible path for accessinganti-ferromagnetic order under current experimental conditions.
We study the influence of the quadratic Zeeman effect on the Mott-insulator phases of hard-core 1D spin-3/2 fermions. We show that, contrary to spinor bosons, the quadratic Zeeman coupling preserves an SU(2)⊗SU(2) symmetry, leading for large-enough quadratic Zeeman coupling to an isotropic pseudo-spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet. Decreasing the quadratic Zeeman coupling, this phase undergoes, depending on the scattering lengths, either a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition into a gapped dimerized phase or a commensurate-incommensurate transition into a gapless spin liquid. This rich phase diagram can be observed experimentally in four-component fermions in optical lattices under similar entropy constraints to those needed for Néel order in spin-1/2 gases.
We present a comprehensive study of the thermodynamic properties of the three-dimensional fermionic Hubbard model, with application to cold fermionic atoms subject to an optical lattice and a trapping potential. Our study is focused on the temperature range of current experimental interest. We employ two theoretical methods---dynamical mean-field theory and high-temperature series---and perform comparative benchmarks to delimit their respective range of validity. Special attention is devoted to understand the implications that thermodynamic properties of this system have on cooling. Considering the distribution function of local occupancies in the inhomogeneous lattice, we show that, under adiabatic evolution, the variation of any observable (e.g., temperature) can be conveniently disentangled into two distinct contributions. The first contribution is due to the redistribution of atoms in the trap during the evolution, while the second one comes from the intrinsic change of the observable. Finally, we provide a simplified picture of a recently proposed cooling procedure, based on spatial entropy separation, by applying this method to an idealized model.
This thesis reports on the microscopic investigation of antiferromagnetic order in Hubbard chains, realized with ultracold repulsively interacting fermions in an optical lattice. Extending a quantum gas microscope on spin resolution opened the possibility to Access the full charge and spin statistics of a strongly correlated fermionic many body system. Using this technique, we measured antiferromagnetic correlations over distances up to three lattice sites. Starting with a repulsive degenerate two component mixture of 6Li atoms trapped in a single plane of a vertical lattice, we loaded the Atoms into one-dimensional tubes of a transverse optical superlattice. By adiabatically ramping up the lattice potential along the tubes, we isentropically entered the strongly correlated regime of the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonian. We spatially separated the two spin states into opposite sites of local double wells orthogonal to the direction of the lattice before single atom and site sensitive imaging. In this way we extracted the spin information of every single lattice site and were able to evaluate spin-spin correlations. The two component degenerate gases were produced with sub-Poissonian atom number fluctuations by magnetically driven evaporative cooling in vicinity of a Feshbach resonance, used to set the scattering length. The dependence of antiferromagnetic correlations on the driving superexchange coupling was experimentally investigated by varying the interparticle scattering length before loading the atoms into the optical lattice. Taking advantage of the underlying trapping potential of the optical lattice, which shaped the filling and the entropy of the gases, the influence of density excitations and different entropies on spin correlations was observed. By post-selecting the Hubbard chains based on their average filling and local atom number fluctuations, spin correlations corresponding to 58% of the zero temperature predictions in the Heisenberg regime were measured. By comparing the obtained antiferromagnetic correlations to Quantum-Monte-Carlo predictions for our System the lowest measured entropy per particle could be stated as s = 0.51(4)kB, clearly below the critical value of s = ln(2)kB, which is required to form longer ranged correlations. Below this critical entropy, in contrast to local density fluctuations, these spin correlations strongly depend on the entropy of the system. In the future, such a spin thermometer can be used to benchmark novel cooling techniques, which are required to enter the temperature regime of d-wave superconducting states. The access to the full particle and spin statistics will enable us to read out multi-point correlation functions, which characterize such exotic states of matter.
A major challenge in realizing antiferromagnetic and superfluid phases in optical lattices is the ability to cool fermions. We determine the equation of state for the 3D repulsive Fermi-Hubbard model as a function of the chemical potential, temperature, and repulsion using unbiased determinantal quantum Monte Carlo methods, and we then use the local density approximation to model a harmonic trap. We show that increasing repulsion leads to cooling but only in a trap, due to the redistribution of entropy from the center to the metallic wings. Thus, even when the average entropy per particle is larger than that required for antiferromagnetism in the homogeneous system, the trap enables the formation of an antiferromagnetic Mott phase.
Summary form only given. Ultra-cold atomic gases trapped in optical lattices offer an unprecedented playground for studying the quantum phases of many-body systems. In particular, quantum states of ultra-cold lattice gases with spin degrees of freedom may be used to simulate quantum magnetism and to investigate physics relevant for our understanding of high-Tcsuperconductivity. While enormous progress has been made towards engineering such systems, achieving the regime of high-Tcsuperconductivity remains experimentally extremely challenging because of the low temperatures required [1].Here, we describe a new technique for the preparation of quantum spin-correlations in a lattice gas of ultracold atoms using atom-light interaction of the kind routinely employed in quantum spin polarization spectroscopy (QPS) [2], a promising technique for detecting quantum phases in lattice gases via quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement. Motivated by recent experimental work demonstrating the generation of spin-squeezing and entanglement in atomic ensembles via QND measurement [3], and by the recent extension of these ideas to unpolarized ensembles [5], we propose an alternative approach to preparing quantum spin-correlations, demonstrating that a simple modification of the experimental scheme of Ref. [4] allows for the on-demand preparation of spatial spin-correlations in a quantum lattice gas. Our method is based on entropic cooling via QND measurement and feedback, and allows the creation and detection of quantum spin-correlations, as well as a certain degree of multipartite entanglement, which we verify by deriving a novel generalization of the entanglement witness decribed in Ref. [5]. The proposed technique works with an unpolarized ensemble of non-interacting spins such as may be obtained by loading ultracold atoms into a deep optical lattice. We illustrate the procedure with examples drawn from the bilinear-biquadratic Hamiltonian, which can be modeled by a 1D chain of spin-1 atoms, showing that it is possible to prepare exponentially- and algebraically-decaying correlations, as well as spatial correlation signatures of more exotic quantum phases such as quantum criticalities.