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arXiv:1312.1235 · Physical Review B

Universal scaling of three-dimensional bosonic gases in a trapping potential

Giacomo Ceccarelli, Jacopo Nespolo

Published Feb 10, 2014• 9 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the critical properties of cold bosonic gases in three dimensions, confined by an external quadratic potential coupled to the particle density, and realistically described by the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model. The trapping potential is often included in experiments with cold atoms and modifies the critical finite-size scaling of the homogeneous system in a nontrivial way. The trap-size scaling (TSS) theory accounts for this effect through the exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}$. We perform extensive simulations of the BH model at the critical temperature, in the presence of harmonic traps. We find that the TSS predictions are universal once we account for the effective way in which the trap locally modifies the chemical potential $\ensuremath{\mu}$ of the system. The trap exponent for the BH model at $\ensuremath{\mu}=0$ is the one corresponding to an effective quartic potential. At positive $\ensuremath{\mu}$, evidence suggests that TSS breaks down sufficiently far from the center of the trap, as the system encounters an effective phase boundary.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.89.054504

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We investigate the critical properties of cold bosonic gases in three dimensions, confined by an external quadratic potential coupled to the particle density, and realistically described by the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model. The trapping potential is often included in experiments with cold atoms and modifies the critical finite-size scaling of the homogeneous system in a nontrivial way. The trap-size scaling (TSS) theory accounts for this effect through the exponent \ensuremathθ\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremathθ. We perform extensive simulations of the BH model at the critical temperature, in the presence of harmonic traps. We find that the TSS predictions are universal once we account for the effective way in which the trap locally modifies the chemical potential \ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμ of the system. The trap exponent for the BH model at \ensuremathμ=0\ensuremath{\mu}=0\ensuremathμ=0 is the one corresponding to an effective quartic potential. At positive \ensuremathμ\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremathμ, evidence suggests that TSS breaks down sufficiently far from the center of the trap, as the system encounters an effective phase boundary.
We investigate the critical behavior of trapped particle systems at the low-temperature superfluid transition. In particular, we consider the three-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a trapping harmonic potential coupled with the particle density, which is a realistic model of cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. We present a numerical study based on quantum Monte Carlo simulations, analyzed in the framework of the trap-size scaling (TSS). We show how the critical parameters can be derived from the trap-size dependencies of appropriate observables, matching them with TSS. This provides a systematic scheme which is supposed to exactly converge to the critical parameters of the transition in the large-trap-size limit. Our numerical analysis may provide a guide for experimental investigations of trapped systems at finite-temperature and quantum transitions, showing how critical parameters may be determined by looking at the scaling of the critical modes with respect to the trap size, i.e., by matching the trap-size dependence of the experimental data with the expected TSS ansatz.
We study the quantum (zero-temperature) critical behaviors of confined particle systems described by the one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a confining potential, at the Mott insulator to superfluid transitions, and within the gapless superfluid phase. Specifically, we consider the hard-core limit of the model, which allows us to study the effects of the confining potential by exact and very accurate numerical results. We analyze the quantum critical behaviors in the large trap-size limit within the framework of the trap-size scaling (TSS) theory, which introduces a new trap exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}$ to describe the dependence on the trap size. This study is relevant for experiments of confined quasi-1D cold atom systems in optical lattices. At the low-density Mott transition, TSS can be shown analytically within the spinless fermion representation of the hard-core limit. The trap-size dependence turns out to be more subtle in the other critical regions, when the corresponding homogeneous system has a nonzero filling fff, showing an infinite number of level crossings of the lowest states when increasing the trap size. At the n=1n=1n=1 Mott transition, this gives rise to a modulated TSS: The TSS is still controlled by the trap-size exponent $\ensuremath{\theta}$, but it gets modulated by periodic functions of the trap size. Modulations of the asymptotic power-law behavior is also found in the gapless superfluid region, with additional multiscaling behaviors.
We study the universal critical behavior of two-dimensional (2D) lattice bosonic gases at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition, which separates the low-temperature superfluid phase from the high-temperature normal phase. For this purpose, we perform quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the hard-core Bose-Hubbard (BH) model at zero chemical potential. We determine the critical temperature by using a matching method that relates finite-size data for the BH model with corresponding data computed in the classical XYXYXY model. In this approach, the neglected scaling corrections decay as inverse powers of the lattice size LLL, and not as powers of 1/lnL1/\mathrm{ln}L1/lnL, as in more standard approaches, making the estimate of the critical temperature much more reliable. Then, we consider the BH model in the presence of a trapping harmonic potential, and we verify the universality of the trap-size dependence at the BKT critical point. This issue is relevant for experiments with quasi-2D trapped cold atoms.
We study some aspects of equilibrium and off-equilibrium quantum dynamics of dilute bosonic gases in the presence of a trapping potential. We consider systems with a fixed number of particles and study their scaling behavior with increasing the trap size. We focus on one-dimensional bosonic systems, such as gases described by the Lieb-Liniger model and its Tonks-Girardeau limit of impenetrable bosons, and gases constrained in optical lattices as described by the Bose-Hubbard model. We study their quantum (zero-temperature) behavior at equilibrium and off equilibrium during the unitary time evolution arising from changes of the trapping potential, which may be instantaneous or described by a power-law time dependence, starting from the equilibrium ground state for an initial trap size. Renormalization-group scaling arguments and analytical and numerical calculations show that the trap-size dependence of the equilibrium and off-equilibrium dynamics can be cast in the form of a trap-size scaling in the low-density regime, characterized by universal power laws of the trap size, in dilute gases with repulsive contact interactions and lattice systems described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The scaling functions corresponding to several physically interesting observables are computed. Our results are of experimental relevance for systems of cold atomic gases trapped by tunable confining potentials.
We investigate some aspects of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of quantum gases in the presence of inhomogeneous conditions. We consider three-dimensional (3D) quantum gases trapped by an external potential when the temperature is sufficiently low to show a BEC-phase region around the center of the trap. If the trap is sufficiently large, different phases may coexist in different space regions, when moving from the center of the trap. We show that the quantum gas develops a peculiar critical behavior at the boundary of the BEC region, whose scaling behavior is controlled by the universality class of the homogeneous BEC transition. We provide numerical evidence of this phenomenon, for lattice atomic gases modeled by the 3D Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian.