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arXiv:1401.5961 · Physical Review A

Quantum phases in tunable state-dependent hexagonal optical lattices

Dirk-Sören Lühmann, Ole Jürgensen, Malte Weinberg, Juliette Simonet, Parvis Soltan-Panahi, K. Sengstock

Published Jul 16, 2014• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the ground-state properties of ultracold bosonic atoms in a state-dependent graphenelike honeycomb optical lattice, where the degeneracy between the two triangular sublattices A and B can be lifted. We discuss the various geometries accessible with this lattice setup and present a scheme to control the energy offset with external magnetic fields. The competition of the on-site interaction with the offset energy leads to Mott phases characterized by population imbalances between the sublattices. For the definition of an optimal Hubbard model, we demonstrate a scheme that allows for the efficient computation of Wannier functions. Using a cluster mean-field method, we compute the phase diagrams and provide a universal representation for arbitrary energy offsets. We find good agreement with the experimental data for the superfluid to Mott insulator transition.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.90.013614

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We study the ground-state properties of ultracold bosonic atoms in a state-dependent graphenelike honeycomb optical lattice, where the degeneracy between the two triangular sublattices A and B can be lifted. We discuss the various geometries accessible with this lattice setup and present a scheme to control the energy offset with external magnetic fields. The competition of the on-site interaction with the offset energy leads to Mott phases characterized by population imbalances between the sublattices. For the definition of an optimal Hubbard model, we demonstrate a scheme that allows for the efficient computation of Wannier functions. Using a cluster mean-field method, we compute the phase diagrams and provide a universal representation for arbitrary energy offsets. We find good agreement with the experimental data for the superfluid to Mott insulator transition.
Hexagonal optical lattices, emulating graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) structures, provide a versatile platform for exploring strongly correlated quantum matter. Using continuous-space exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the phase diagrams of ultracold bosons in honeycomb and h-BN lattices. For the honeycomb lattice, we find significant deviations from the standard Bose--Hubbard model even for strong lattice amplitudes. We observe suppressed Mott insulator lobes and the absence of higher-order insulating phases, which we attribute to strong density-assisted tunneling effects. In the h-BN case, a rich phase diagram emerges, featuring multiple Mott lobes with various sublattice occupations, driven by the interplay of lattice asymmetry, interactions, and particle filling. Our results highlight the necessity of continuous-space treatments for capturing the full complexity of bosonic quantum phases in hexagonal geometries, paving the way for experimental realizations with ultracold atoms and further theoretical work.
We investigate the ground-state and finite-temperature phase diagrams of the Bose-Hubbard model on a honeycomb superlattice. The interplay between the superlattice potential depth $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}/t$ and the on-site interaction U/tU/tU/t gives rise to three distinct quantum phases at zero temperature: a superfluid phase, a Mott insulator I phase with unit filling on each site, and a Mott insulator II phase characterized by density imbalance---double occupancy on one sublattice and vacancy on the other at unit filling. The SF-MI transitions are found to be continuous, consistent with second-order quantum phase transitions. We further extend our analysis to finite temperatures within the superfluid regime. Our work highlights how a honeycomb superlattice geometry enables access to interaction- and lattice-modulation-driven quantum phases, including a density-imbalanced Mott insulator and a robust superfluid regime, offering concrete theoretical predictions for cold-atom experiments.
We investigate systems of bosonic particles at zero temperature in triangular and hexagonal optical lattice potentials in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Employing the process-chain approach, we obtain accurate values for the boundaries between the Mott insulating phase and the superfluid phase. These results can serve as reference data for both other approximation schemes and upcoming experiments. Since arbitrary integer filling factors g are amenable to our technique, we are able to monitor the behavior of the critical hopping parameters with increasing filling. We also demonstrate that the g -dependence of these exact parameters is described almost perfectly by a scaling relation inferred from the mean-field approximation.
Over recent years, exciting developments in the field of ultracold atoms confined in optical lattices have led to numerous theoretical proposals devoted to the quantum simulation of problems e.g. known from condensed matter physics. Many of those ideas demand experimental environments with non-cubic lattice geometries. In this paper, we report on the implementation of a versatile three-beam lattice allowing for the generation of triangular as well as hexagonal optical lattices. As an important step, the superfluid–Mott insulator (SF–MI) quantum phase transition has been observed and investigated in detail in this lattice geometry for the first time. In addition to this, we study the physics of spinor Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC) in the presence of the triangular optical lattice potential, especially spin changing dynamics across the SF–MI transition. Our results suggest that, below the SF–MI phase transition, a well-established mean-field model describes the observed data when renormalizing the spin-dependent interaction. Interestingly, this opens up new perspectives for a lattice-driven tuning of a spin dynamics resonance occurring through the interplay of the quadratic Zeeman effect and spin-dependent interaction. Finally, we discuss further lattice configurations that can be realized with our setup.
We study bosonic atoms in optical honeycomb lattices with anisotropic tunneling and find dimerized Mott insulator (MI) phases with fractional filling. These incompressible insulating phases are characterized by an interaction-driven localization of particles in respect to the individual dimers and large local particle-number fluctuations within the dimers. We calculate the ground-state phase diagrams and the excitation spectra using an accurate cluster mean-field method. The cluster treatment enables us to probe the fundamental excitations of the dimerized MI where the excitation gap is dominated by the intra-dimer tunneling amplitude. This allows the distinction from normal Mott insulating phases gapped by the on-site interaction. In addition, we present analytical results for the phase diagram derived by a higher-order strong-coupling perturbative expansion approach. By computing finite lattices with large diameters the influence of a harmonic confinement is discussed in detail. It is shown that a large fraction of atoms forms the dimerized MI under experimental conditions. The necessary anisotropic tunneling can be realized either by periodic driving of the optical lattice or by engineering directly a dimerized lattice potential. The dimers can be mapped to their antisymmetric states creating a lattice with coupled p -orbitals.