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arXiv:1111.0798 · New Journal of Physics

Fractional quantum Hall states of a few bosonic atoms in geometric gauge fields

Bruno Juliá-Díaz, Tobias Graß, N Barberán, Maciej Lewenstein

Published May 1, 2012• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We use the exact diagonalization method to analyze the possibility of generating strongly correlated states in two-dimensional clouds of ultracold bosonic atoms that are subjected to a geometric gauge field that was created by coupling two internal atomic states to a laser beam. On tuning the gauge field strength, the system undergoes stepwise transitions between different ground states (GSs), which we describe by using analytical trial wave functions, including the Pfaffian (Pf), the Laughlin and a Laughlin quasiparticle many-body state. Whereas for an infinitely strong laser field, the internal degree of freedom of the atoms can adiabatically follow their center-of-mass movement, a finite laser intensity gives rise to non-adiabatic transitions between the internal states, which are shown to break the cylindrical symmetry of the Hamiltonian. We study the influence of the asymmetry on the GS properties of the system. The main effect is to reduce the overlap of the numerical solutions with the analytical trial expressions by occupying states with higher angular momentum. Thus, we propose generalized wave functions arising from the Laughlin and Pf wave functions by including components where extra Jastrow factors appear while preserving important features of these states. We analyze quasihole excitations over the Laughlin and generalized Laughlin states and show that they possess effective fractional charge and obey anyonic statistics. Finally, we discuss the observability of the Laughlin state for increasing numbers of particles.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/14/5/055003

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We use the exact diagonalization method to analyze the possibility of generating strongly correlated states in two-dimensional clouds of ultracold bosonic atoms that are subjected to a geometric gauge field that was created by coupling two internal atomic states to a laser beam. On tuning the gauge field strength, the system undergoes stepwise transitions between different ground states (GSs), which we describe by using analytical trial wave functions, including the Pfaffian (Pf), the Laughlin and a Laughlin quasiparticle many-body state. Whereas for an infinitely strong laser field, the internal degree of freedom of the atoms can adiabatically follow their center-of-mass movement, a finite laser intensity gives rise to non-adiabatic transitions between the internal states, which are shown to break the cylindrical symmetry of the Hamiltonian. We study the influence of the asymmetry on the GS properties of the system. The main effect is to reduce the overlap of the numerical solutions with the analytical trial expressions by occupying states with higher angular momentum. Thus, we propose generalized wave functions arising from the Laughlin and Pf wave functions by including components where extra Jastrow factors appear while preserving important features of these states. We analyze quasihole excitations over the Laughlin and generalized Laughlin states and show that they possess effective fractional charge and obey anyonic statistics. Finally, we discuss the observability of the Laughlin state for increasing numbers of particles.
Using exact diagonalization for a small system of cold bosonic atoms, we analyze the emergence of strongly correlated states in the presence of an artificial magnetic field. This gauge field is generated by a laser beam that couples two internal atomic states, and it is related to Berry's geometrical phase that emerges when an atom follows adiabatically one of the two eigenstates of the atom-laser coupling. Our approach allows us to go beyond the adiabatic approximation, and to characterize the generalized Laughlin wave functions that appear in the strong magnetic-field limit.
The present thesis studies a variety of cold atomic systems in artificial gauge fields. In the first part we focus on fractional quantum Hall effects, asking whether interesting topological states can be realized with cold atoms. We start by making a close connection to solid-state systems and first consider fermionic atoms with dipolar interactions. Assuming the system to be in the Laughlin state, we evaluate the energy gap in the thermodynamic limit as a measure for the robustness of the state. We show that it can be increased by additionally applying a non-Abelian gauge field squeezing the Landau levels. We then switch to bosonic systems with repulsive contact interactions. Artificial magnetic fields for cold bosons have extensively been discussed before in the context of rotating Bose gases. We follow a different approach where the gauge field is due to an atom-laser coupling. Thus, transitions between different dressed states have to be included. They are shown to break the cylindrical symmetry of the system. Modifying the Laughlin state and the Moore-Read state accordingly, we determine the parameter regimes where they are good representations for the ground state of the system obtained via exact diagonalization. One of the most interesting feature of fractional quantum Hall states is the anyonic behavior of their excitations. We therefore also study quasiholes in the Laughlin state and the modified Laughlin state. They are shown to posses anyonic properties, which become manifest even in small systems. Moreover, the dynamics of a single quasihole causes visible traces in the density of the system which allow to clearly distinguish the Laughlin regime from less correlated phases. In the latter, a sequence of collapses and revivals of the quasihole can be observed, which is absent in the Laughlin regime. Extending our study to bosonic systems with a pesudospin-1/2 degree of freedom, we discuss the formation of strongly correlated spin singlets. Strikingly, at filling v=4/3, the system is described by a state with non-Abelian excitations, which is constructed as the zero-energy ground state of repulsive three-body contact interactions. Systems with internal degrees of freedom also allow for implementing artificial spin-orbit coupling. It is shown to give rise to a variety of incompressible states. In the second part of the thesis, we concentrate on condensed system. Bose-Einstein condensates with spin-orbit coupling are shown to have a degeneracy on the mean-field level, which is lifted by quantum and thermal fluctuations. The system becomes experimentally feasible in three dimensions, where the condensate depletion remains finite, and thus allow for an experimental observation of this order-by-disorder mechanism. Finally, we study the influence of Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields on the quantum phase transitions of bosons in a square optical lattice. Re-entrant superfluid phases and superfluids at finite momenta are interesting properties featured by such systems.
Synthetic gauge fields for ultracold neutral atoms-engineered using the interaction between laser fields and the atoms' internal 'spin' degrees of freedom-provide promising techniques for generating the large (synthetic) magnetic fields required to reach the fractional quantum Hall (FQH) limit in quantum gases, bosonic or fermionic alike.Because neutral atoms can move in a nearly disorder-free environment and they have extremely simple contact interactions, the resulting FQH states would be revealed in their most essential form.Moreover, bosonic FQH states represent a new frontier and have never been seen in any setting.Going beyond electromagnetismʼs conventional scalar gauge field, it is possible to create more general non-Abelian gauge potentials.When these are spatially uniform, they are equivalent to spin-orbit coupling familiar in material systems, and can lead to cold atom analogs of topological insulators and topological superconductors.In this tutorial, we introduce basic concepts underlying these gauge fields, making connections to the Aharonov-Bohm phase and geometric phase.We focus on the system of neutral atoms 'dressed' by multiple laser beams, where the eigenstates of the resulting Hamiltonian are known as dressed states.Synthetic gauge potentials arise from the unitary transformation required to express these dressed states in terms of the laser-free eigenstates.We discuss stability of laser-dressed atoms corresponding to the adiabatic condition and the probability of non-adiabatic transitions.Adopting both the semiclassical and quantum mechanical approaches, we demonstrate they agree in the suitable limit.We also analyze using both the conventional adiabatic picture and exact picture, where the kinetic energy is neglected in the former and retained in the latter picture.
We propose a realistic scheme to create motionally entangled states of a few bosonic atoms. It can experimentally be realized with a gas of ultracold bosonic atoms trapped in a deep optical lattice potential. By simultaneously deforming and rotating the trapping potential on each lattice site it is feasible to adiabatically create a variety of entangled states on each lattice well. We fully address the case of N=2N=2N=2 and 4 atoms per well and identify a sequence of fractional quantum Hall states: the Pfaffian state, the 1∕21∕21∕2-Laughlin quasiparticle, and the 1∕21∕21∕2-Laughlin state. Exact knowledge of the spectrum has allowed us to design adiabatic paths to these states, with all times and parameters well within the reach of current experimental setups. We further discuss the detection of these states by measuring different properties as their density profile, angular momentum, or correlation functions.
We analyze the strongly correlated regime of a two-component trapped ultracold fermionic gas in a synthetic non-Abelian U(2)U(2)U(2) gauge potential, that consists of both a magnetic field and a homogeneous spin-orbit coupling. This gauge potential deforms the Landau levels (LLs) with respect to the Abelian case and exchanges their ordering as a function of the spin-orbit coupling. In view of experimental realizations, we show that a harmonic potential combined with a Zeeman term gives rise to an angular momentum term, which can be used to test the stability of the correlated states obtained through interactions. We derive the Haldane pseudopotentials (HPs) describing the interspecies contact interaction within a lowest LL approximation. Unlike ordinary fractional quantum Hall systems and ultracold bosons with short-range interactions in the same gauge potential, the HPs for sufficiently strong non-Abelian fields show an unconventional nonmonotonic behavior in the relative angular momentum. Exploiting this property, we study the occurrence of new incompressible ground states as a function of the total angular momentum. In the first deformed Landau level (DLL) we obtain Laughlin and Jain states. Instead, in the second DLL three classes of stabilized states appear: Laughlin states, a series of intermediate strongly correlated states, and finally vortices of the integer quantum Hall state. Remarkably, in the intermediate regime, the nonmonotonic HPs of the second DLL induce two-particle correlations which are reminiscent of paired states such as the Haffnian state. Via exact diagonalization in the disk geometry, we compute experimentally relevant observables such as density profiles and correlations, and we study the entanglement spectra as a further tool to characterize the obtained strongly correlated states.
Strongly interacting topological matter exhibits fundamentally new phenomena with potential applications in quantum information technology. Emblematic instances are fractional quantum Hall states, where the interplay of magnetic fields and strong interactions gives rise to fractionally charged quasi-particles, long-ranged entanglement, and anyonic exchange statistics. Progress in engineering synthetic magnetic fields has raised the hope to create these exotic states in controlled quantum systems. However, except for a recent Laughlin state of light, preparing fractional quantum Hall states in engineered systems remains elusive. Here, we realize a fractional quantum Hall (FQH) state with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. The state is a lattice version of a bosonic ν=1/2ν=1/2ν=1/2 Laughlin state with two particles on sixteen sites. This minimal system already captures many hallmark features of Laughlin-type FQH states: we observe a suppression of two-body interactions, we find a distinctive vortex structure in the density correlations, and we measure a fractional Hall conductivity of σH/σ0=0.6(2)σ_\text{H}/σ_0= 0.6(2)σH​/σ0​=0.6(2) via the bulk response to a magnetic perturbation. Furthermore, by tuning the magnetic field we map out the transition point between the normal and the FQH regime through a spectroscopic probe of the many-body gap. Our work provides a starting point for exploring highly entangled topological matter with ultracold atoms.