Bose-Fermi mixtures have been recently realized and invesitigated in ultracold atomic experiments. We formulate quantum Monte Carlo simulation of Bose-Fermi mixtures on the (3+1)-dimensional lattice. As its first application, we analyze the boson-fermion pair correlation and the phase diagram of the Bose-Einstein condensation.
Exploratory simulations of Bose-Fermi mixtures on the three-dimensional optical lattice at finite temperature are performed by adopting the lattice quantum chromodynamics technique. We analyze the bosonic superfluid transition and its dependence on the strength of the boson-fermion coupling. The particle densities and the pair occupancies are also studied to understand the effect of the boson-fermion coupling to the microscopic properties of the system. The effect of the induced fermion-fermion interaction by the boson density fluctuation is clearly seen.
A mixture of ultracold bosons and fermions placed in an optical lattice constitutes a novel kind of quantum gas, and leads to phenomena, which so far has been discussed neither in atomic physics, nor in condensed matter physics. We discuss the phase diagram at low temperatures, and in the limit of strong atom-atom interactions, and predict the existence of quantum phases that involve pairing of fermions with one or more bosons, or, respectively, bosonic holes. The resulting composite fermions may form, depending on the system parameters, a normal Fermi liquid, a density wave, a superfluid liquid, or an insulator with fermionic domains. We discuss the feasibility for observing such phases in current experiments.
We study the quantum phase diagrams of Bose-Fermi mixtures of ultracold atoms confined to one dimension in an optical lattice. For systems with incommensurate densities, various quantum phases, e.g., spin- or charge-density waves, pairing, phase separation, and the Wigner crystal, are found to be dominant in different parameter regimes within a bosonization approach. The structure of the phase diagram leads us to propose that the system is best understood as a Luttinger liquid of polarons (i.e., atoms of one species surrounded by screening clouds of the other species). Special fillings, half filling for fermions, and unit filling for bosons, and the resulting gapped phases are also discussed, as well as the properties of the polarons and the experimental realization of these phases.
We study the ground state phases of Bose-Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional optical lattices with quantum Monte Carlo simulations using the canonical worm algorithm. Depending on the filling of bosons and fermions, and the on-site intra- and interspecies interaction, different kinds of incompressible and superfluid phases appear. On the compressible side, correlations between bosons and fermions can lead to a distinctive behavior of the bosonic superfluid density and the fermionic stiffness, as well as of the equal-time Green functions, which allow one to identify regions where the two species exhibit anticorrelated flow. We present here complete phase diagrams for these systems at different fillings and as a function of the interaction parameters.
The study of ultracold optically trapped atoms has opened new vistas in the physics of correlated quantum systems. Much attention has now turned to mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms. A central puzzle is the disagreement between the experimental observation of a reduced bosonic visibility Vb, and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations which show Vb increasing. In this paper, we present QMC simulations which evaluate the density profiles and Vb of mixtures of bosons and fermions in one-dimensional optical lattices. We resolve the discrepancy between theory and experiment by identifying parameter regimes where Vb is reduced, and where it is increased. We present a simple qualitative picture of the different response to the fermion admixture in terms of the superfluid and Mott-insulating domains before and after the fermions are included. Finally, we show that Vb exhibits kinks which are tied to the domain evolution present in the pure case, and also additional structure arising from the formation of boson-fermion molecules, a prediction for future experiments.
Ultracold atomic gases may be the ultimate quantum simulator.These isolated systems have the lowest temperatures in the observable universe, and their properties and interactions can be precisely and accurately tuned across a full spectrum of behaviors, from few-body physics to highly-correlated many-body effects.The ability to impose potentials on and tune interactions within ultracold gases to mimic complex systems mean they could become a theorist's playground.One of their great strengths, however, is also one of the largest obstacles to this dream: isolation.This thesis touches on both of these themes.First, methods to characterize phases and quantum critical points, and to construct finite temperature phase diagrams using experimentally accessible observables in the Bose Hubbard model are discussed.Then, the transition from a weakly to a strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture in the continuum is analyzed using zero temperature numerical techniques.Real materials can be emulated by ultracold atomic gases loaded into optical lattice potentials.We discuss the characteristics of a single boson species trapped in an optical lattice (described by the Bose Hubbard model) and the hallmarks of the quantum critical region that separates the superfluid and the Mott insulator ground states.We propose a method to map the quantum critical region using the single, experimentally accessible, local quantity R, the ratio of compressibility to local number fluctuations.The procedure to map a phase diagram with R is easily generalized to inhomogeneous systems and generic many-body Hamiltonians.We illustrate it here using quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the 2D Bose Hubbard model.Secondly, we investigate the transition from a degenerate Fermi gas weakly coupled List of Tables Table Page 2.1 Techniques to Probe Atoms in Optical Lattices . . . . . .