Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an ideal platform for exploring many-body physics of a large system arising from the coupling among a series of small identical systems whose few-body dynamics is exactly solvable. Using Landau-Zener (LZ) transition of bosonic atoms in double-well optical lattices as an experimentally realizable model, we investigate such few- to many-body routes by exploring the relation and difference between the small few-body (in one double well) and the large many-body (in double-well lattice) nonequilibrium dynamics of cold atoms in optical lattices. We find the many-body coupling between double wells greatly enhances the LZ transition probability. The many-body dynamics in the double-well lattice shares both similarity and difference from the few-body dynamics in one and two double wells. The sign of the on-site interaction plays a significant role in the many-body LZ transition. Various experimental signatures of the many-body LZ transition, including atom density, momentum distribution, and density-density correlation, are obtained.
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an ideal platform for exploring many-body physics of a large system arising from the coupling among a series of small identical systems whose few-body dynamics is exactly solvable. Using Landau-Zener (LZ) transition of bosonic atoms in double-well optical lattices as an experimentally realizable model, we investigate such few- to many-body routes by exploring the relation and difference between the small few-body (in one double well) and the large many-body (in double-well lattice) nonequilibrium dynamics of cold atoms in optical lattices. We find the many-body coupling between double wells greatly enhances the LZ transition probability. The many-body dynamics in the double-well lattice shares both similarity and difference from the few-body dynamics in one and two double wells. The sign of the on-site interaction plays a significant role in the many-body LZ transition. Various experimental signatures of the many-body LZ transition, including atom density, momentum distribution, and density-density correlation, are obtained.
We explore the asymmetric sequential Landau-Zener (LZ) dynamics in an ensemble of interacting Bose-condensed two-level atoms coupled with a cavity field. Assuming the couplings between all atoms and the cavity field are identical, the interplay between atom-atom interaction and detuning may lead to a series of LZ transitions. Unlike the conventional sequential LZ transitions, which are symmetric to the zero detuning, the LZ transitions of Bose-condensed atoms in a cavity field are asymmetric and sensitively depend on the photon number distribution of the cavity. In LZ processes involving single excitation numbers, both the variance of the relative atom number and the step slope of the sequential population ladder are asymmetric, and the asymmetry becomes more significant for smaller excitation numbers. Furthermore, in LZ processes involving multiple excitation numbers, there may appear asymmetric population ladders with decreasing step heights. During a dynamical LZ process, due to the atom-cavity coupling, the cavity field shows dynamical collapses and revivals. In comparison with the symmetric LZ transitions in a classical field, the asymmetric LZ transitions in a cavity field originate from the photon-number-dependent Rabi frequency. The asymmetric sequential LZ dynamics of Bose-condensed atoms in a cavity field may open up a way to explore the fundamental many-body physics in coupled atom-photon systems.
Motivated by recent cold-atom experiments in optical lattices, we consider a lattice version of the Landau-Zener problem. Every single site is described by a Landau-Zener problem, but due to particle tunneling between neighboring lattice sites this on-site single-particle Landau-Zener dynamics couples to the particle motion within the lattice. The lattice, apart from having a dephasing effect on single-site Landau-Zener transitions, also implies, in the presence of a confining trap, an intersite particle flow induced by the Landau-Zener sweeping. This gives rise to an interplay between intra- and intersite dynamics. The adiabaticity constraint is therefore not simply given by the standard one, the Hamiltonian rate of change relative to the gap of the on-site problem. In experimentally realistic situations, the full system evolution is well described by Franck-Condon physics; e.g., nonadiabatic excitations are predominantly external ones characterized by large phononic vibrations in the atomic cloud, while internal excitations are very weak as close-to-perfect on-site transitions take place.
The Mott-insulator--superfluid transition for ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice has been extensively studied in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model with two-body on-site interactions. In this paper, we analyze the additional effect of the three-body on-site interactions on this phase transition in an optical lattice and the transitions between the various phases that arise in an optical superlattice. Using the mean-field theory and the density matrix renormalization group method, we find the phase diagrams depicting the relationships between various physical quantities in an optical lattice and superlattice. We also propose a possible experimental signature to observe the on-site three-body interactions.
Many-body localization for a system of bosons trapped in a one-dimensional lattice is discussed. Two models that may be realized for cold atoms in optical lattices are considered. The model with a random on-site potential is compared with previously introduced random interactions model. While the origin and character of the disorder in both systems is different they show interesting similar properties. In particular, many-body localization appears for a sufficiently large disorder as verified by a time evolution of initial density wave states as well as using statistical properties of energy levels for small system sizes. Starting with different initial states, we observe that the localization properties are energy-dependent which reveals an inverted many-body localization edge in both systems (that finding is also verified by statistical analysis of energy spectrum). Moreover, we consider computationally challenging regime of transition between many body localized and extended phases where we observe a characteristic algebraic decay of density correlations which may be attributed to subdiffusion (and Griffiths-like regions) in the studied systems. Ergodicity breaking in the disordered Bose–Hubbard models is compared with the slowing-down of the time evolution of the clean system at large interactions.
We study the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition of ultracold bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice with a double-well confining trap using the density-matrix renormalization group method. At low density, the system behaves similarly as two separated ones inside each well. At high density, however, interesting features appear resulting from the quantum tunnelling between the two wells and the competition between the ``superfluid'' and Mott regions. These interesting features are characterized by a rich step-plateau structure in the visibility and the satellite peaks in the momentum distribution function, with an oscillating pattern as a function of the on-site repulsion. These properties shed light on the understanding of the quantum phase coherence between two coupled condensates.
Two models are discussed here to illustrate the quantum many-body phenomena in mixtures of ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices. The first model describes a mixture of two species of bosonic atoms of equal masses in optical lattices and the second describes a mixture of heavy bosonic atoms and light fermionic atoms in optical lattices. For both models, we assume the trap is present and use parameters typical in experiment. For the first model, the discussion is aimed at providing a thorough description of the collective behavior of the binary mixture in various interaction regions, with emphasis on two many-body phenomena, pairing and anti-pairing, as a result of the inter-species interaction. The pairing leads to a new type of superfluid order, called the paired superfluid (PSF) and the anti-pairing leads to another type of superfluid order, called the counter-flow superfluid (CFSF). In addition, we discuss the coexistence of charge density wave order with the three superfluid orders in the strong interaction region. We use both Luttinger liquid theory and the time evolving block decimation (TEBD) method to study this model in one dimension. The discussion is organized in three parts: the phase diagram and the correlation functions; the noise correlation functions; and the transport properties. Two phase diagrams are constructed to map the different orders in the parameter space. The correlation functions, include noise correlations, are carefully examined for the determination of the orders and for possible detection methods. In the end, the transport properties of the PSF and CFSF orders are studied through the dipole oscillation induced by trap displacement. For the second model, examining a mixture of heavy bosons and light fermions, the discussion is oriented toward determining the thermal properties of the mixture for attractive inter-species interactions. This work is motivated by experiments creating artificial molecules through optical and magnetic control of ultra-cold atoms. We use the strong coupling (SC) expansion method to evaluate the density profile, the onsite inter-species correlations, the density fluctuations and the entropy per particle. Analytical expressions are derived for all the quantities above as well as the partition function. To benchmark the accuracy, the SC calculations are compared with inhomogeneous dynamical mean field theory (IDMFT) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. From the calculations, we find that 1) the efficiency of creating pre-formed molecules is significantly increased by confining the mixtures onto optical lattices; 2) the temperature of the mixtures in optical lattices can be reliably estimated through the density gradient and the density fluctuations.