We develop a Ginzburg-Landau theory for the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model which effectively describes both static and dynamic properties of photons evolving in a cubic lattice of cavities, each filled with a two-level atom. To this end we calculate the effective action to first order in the hopping parameter. Within a Landau description of a spatially and temporally constant order parameter we calculate the finite-temperature mean-field quantum phase boundary between a Mott insulating and a superfluid phase of polaritons. Furthermore, within the Ginzburg-Landau description of a spatiotemporal varying order parameter we determine the excitation spectra in both phases and, in particular, the sound velocity of light in the superfluid phase.
We develop a Ginzburg-Landau theory for the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model which effectively describes both static and dynamic properties of photons evolving in a cubic lattice of cavities, each filled with a two-level atom. To this end we calculate the effective action to first order in the hopping parameter. Within a Landau description of a spatially and temporally constant order parameter we calculate the finite-temperature mean-field quantum phase boundary between a Mott insulating and a superfluid phase of polaritons. Furthermore, within the Ginzburg-Landau description of a spatiotemporal varying order parameter we determine the excitation spectra in both phases and, in particular, the sound velocity of light in the superfluid phase.
In recent years the quantum simulation of condensed-matter physics problems has resulted from ex- citing experimental progress in the realm of ultracold atoms and molecules in optical lattices. In this thesis we analyze theoretically a spinor Bose gas loaded into a three-dimensional cubic optical lattice. In order to account for different superfluid phases of spin-1 bosons with a linear Zeeman effect, we work out a Ginzburg-Landau theory for the underlying spin-1 Bose-Hubbard model. To this end we add artificial symmetry- breaking currents to the spin-1 Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian in order to break the global U (1) symmetry. With this we determine a diagrammatic expansion of the grand-canonical free energy up to fourth order in the symmetry-breaking currents and up to the leading non-trivial order in the hopping strength which is of first order. As a cross-check we demonstrate that the resulting grand- canonical free energy allows to recover the mean-field theory. Applying a Legendre transfor- mation to the grand-canonical free energy, where the symmetry-breaking currents are transformed to order parameters, we obtain the effective Ginzburg-Landau action. With this we calculate in detail at zero temperature the Mott insulator-superfluid quantum phase boundary as well as condensate and particle number density in the superfluid phase. We find that both mean-field and Ginzburg-Landau theory yield the same quantum phase transition between the Mott insulator and superfluid phases, but the range of validity of the mean-field theory turns out to be smaller than that of the Ginzburg-Landau theory. Due to this finding we expect that the Ginzburg-Landau theory gives better results for the superfluid phase and, thus, we restrict ourselves to extremize only the effective Ginzburg-Landau action with respect to the order parameters. With- out external magnetic field the superfluid phase is a polar (ferromagnetic) state for anti-ferromagnetic (ferromagnetic) interactions, i.e. only the hyperfine spin 0 (1) is macroscopically occupied, in accor- dance with previous mean-field results. On the other hand, in the presence of the external magnetic field for ferromagnetic interaction, the superfluid phase does not change as the minimization of the energy implies the maximal spin value. However, when an anti-ferromagnetic interaction competes with the linear Zeeman effect, we can distinguish various ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic su- perfluid phases within the range of validity of the Ginzburg-Landau theory. Increasing the external magnetic field yields a breaking of spin singlet pairs and a subsequent alignment of spins, thus anti- ferromagnetic phases decrease until only a ferromagnetic superfluid phase prevails. In addition, we find that the superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition is always of second order for both ferromag- netic and anti- ferromagnetic interactions. However, the transitions between different superfluid phases for an anti-ferromagnetic interaction can be both of first and second order depending on whether the respective macroscopic occupation of hyperfine spin states changes discontinuously or continuously. The established Ginzburg-Landau theory for spin-1 bosons in optical lattices will certainly be the basis for many further applications as, for instance, time-of-flight absorption pictures or collective excitations, which are of experimental importance.
Based on standard field-theoretic considerations, we develop an effective action approach for investigating quantum phase transitions in lattice Bose systems at arbitrary temperature. We begin by adding to the Hamiltonian of interest a symmetry breaking source term. Using time-dependent perturbation theory, we then expand the grand-canonical free energy as a double power series in both the tunneling and the source term. From here, an order parameter field is introduced in the standard way and the underlying effective action is derived via a Legendre transformation. Determining the Ginzburg-Landau expansion to first order in the tunneling term, expressions for the Mott insulator-superfluid phase boundary, condensate density, average particle number, and compressibility are derived and analyzed in detail. Additionally, excitation spectra in the ordered phase are found by considering both longitudinal and transverse variations of the order parameter. Finally, these results are applied to the concrete case of the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian on a three-dimensional cubic lattice, and compared with the corresponding results from mean-field theory. Although both approaches yield the same Mott insulator--superfluid phase boundary to first order in the tunneling, the predictions of our effective action theory turn out to be superior to the mean-field results deeper into the superfluid phase.
Regular arrays of electromagnetic resonators, in turn coupled coherently to individual quantum two-level systems, exhibit a quantum phase transition of polaritons from a superfluid phase to a Mott-insulating phase. The critical behavior of such a Jaynes-Cummings lattice thus resembles the physics of the Bose-Hubbard model. We explore this analogy by elaborating on the mean-field theory of the phase transition and by presenting several useful mappings which pinpoint both similarities and differences of the two models. We show that a field-theory approach can be applied to prove the existence of multicritical curves analogous to the multicritical points of the Bose-Hubbard model, and we provide analytical expressions for the position of these curves.
We analyze theoretically a spinor Bose gas loaded into a three-dimensional cubic optical lattice. In order to account for different superfluid phases of spin-1 bosons in the presence of an external magnetic field, we work out a Ginzburg-Landau theory for the underlying spin-1 Bose-Hubbard model. In particular at zero temperature, we determine both the Mott and the superfluid phases for the competition between the anti-ferromagnetic interaction and the linear Zeeman effect within the validity range of the Ginzburg-Landau theory. Moreover, we find that the phase transition between the superfluid and Mott insulator phases is of second order and that the transitions between the respective superfluid phases for anti-ferromagnetic interaction can be both of first and second order.
We discuss the Jaynes–Cummings–Hubbard model describing the superfluid–Mott insulator transition of polaritons (i.e., dressed photon–qubit states) in coupled qubit–cavity arrays in the crossover from strong to weak correlations. In the strongly correlated regime the phase diagram and the elementary excitations of lattice polaritons near the Mott lobes are calculated analytically using a slave-boson theory (SBT). The opposite regime of weakly interacting polariton superfluids is described by a weak-coupling mean-field theory for a generalized multi-mode Dicke model. We show that a remarkable relation between the two theories exists in the limit of large photon bandwidth and large negative detuning, i.e., when the nature of polariton quasiparticles becomes qubit-like. In this regime, the weak-coupling theory predicts the existence of a single Mott lobe with a change of the universality class of the phase transition at the tip of the lobe, in perfect agreement with the SBT. Moreover, the spectra of low energy excitations, i.e., the sound velocity of the Goldstone mode and the gap of the amplitude mode match exactly as calculated from both theories.
Within the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism we derive a Ginzburg-Landau theory for the Bose-Hubbard model which describes the real-time dynamics of the complex order parameter field. Analyzing the excitations in the vicinity of the quantum phase transitions it turns out that particle/hole dispersions in the Mott phase map continuously onto corresponding amplitude/phase excitations in the superfluid phase. Furthermore, in the superfluid phase we find a sound mode, which is in accordance with recent Bragg spectroscopy measurements in the Bogoliubov regime, as well as an additional gapped mode, which seems to have been detected via lattice modulation.