The absence of energy dissipation leads to an intriguing out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultracold polar gases in optical lattices, characterized by the formation of dynamically bound on-site and inter-site clusters of two or more particles, and by an effective blockade repulsion. These effects combined with the controlled preparation of initial states available in cold-gas experiments can be employed to create interesting out-of-equilibrium states. These include quasiequilibrated effectively repulsive 1D gases for attractive dipolar interactions and dynamically bound crystals. Furthermore, nonequilibrium polar lattice gases can offer a promising scenario for the study of quasi-many-body localization in the absence of quenched disorder. This fascinating out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultracold polar gases in optical lattices may be accessible in on-going experiments.
The absence of energy dissipation leads to an intriguing out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultracold polar gases in optical lattices, characterized by the formation of dynamically bound on-site and inter-site clusters of two or more particles, and by an effective blockade repulsion. These effects combined with the controlled preparation of initial states available in cold-gas experiments can be employed to create interesting out-of-equilibrium states. These include quasiequilibrated effectively repulsive 1D gases for attractive dipolar interactions and dynamically bound crystals. Furthermore, nonequilibrium polar lattice gases can offer a promising scenario for the study of quasi-many-body localization in the absence of quenched disorder. This fascinating out-of-equilibrium dynamics for ultracold polar gases in optical lattices may be accessible in on-going experiments.
One-dimensional polar gases in deep optical lattices present a severely constrained dynamics due to the interplay between dipolar interactions, energy conservation, and finite bandwidth. The appearance of dynamically bound nearest-neighbor dimers enhances the role of the 1/r^{3} dipolar tail, resulting in the absence of external disorder, in quasi-localization via dimer clustering for very low densities and moderate dipole strengths. Furthermore, even weak dipoles allow for the formation of self-bound superfluid lattice droplets with a finite doping of mobile, but confined, holons. Our results, which can be extrapolated to other power-law interactions, are directly relevant for current and future lattice experiments with magnetic atoms and polar molecules.
Strong enough intersite interactions may result in lack of ergodicity in disorder-free many-body lattice systems. Ultracold dipolar gases in optical lattices provide an experimentally accessible platform for exploring this physics. Dipolar intersite interactions are usually assumed to decay with a fixed power law. We show that in a one-dimensional polar lattice gas the actual decay depends on the transversal confinement. This affects profoundly the particle dynamics, which mimics rather that of a system with an externally controllable effective power-law interaction. Our results show that the crucial role of the interaction decay on disorder-free localization may be flexibly studied in experiments with polar gases.
Polar molecules in an optical lattice provide a versatile platform to study quantum many-body dynamics. Here we use such a system to prepare a density distribution where lattice sites are either empty or occupied by a doublon composed of an interacting Bose-Fermi pair. By letting this out-of-equilibrium system evolve from a well-defined, but disordered, initial condition, we observe clear effects on pairing that arise from inter-species interactions, a higher partial-wave Feshbach resonance and excited Bloch-band population. These observations facilitate a detailed understanding of molecule formation in the lattice. Moreover, the interplay of tunnelling and interaction of fermions and bosons provides a controllable platform to study Bose-Fermi Hubbard dynamics. Additionally, we can probe the distribution of the atomic gases in the lattice by measuring the inelastic loss of doublons. These techniques realize tools that are generically applicable to studying the complex dynamics of atomic mixtures in optical lattices.
The study of out-of-equilibrium dynamics in ultra-cold gases is a new and exciting field, driven largely by the recent experimental advances in controlling and imaging cold clouds. The experimental and theoretical work thus far has been somewhat exploratory and largely numerical in nature, as the very paradigms for thinking about these systems are not well established. In this thesis I consider several different scenarios of ultra-cold bosonic and fermionic gases driven out of equilibrium and study their properties. In Chapter 1, I provide an overview of the phenomenology of ultra-cold gases, highlighting the timescales governing these systems and how the experimentalist can tune them. I discuss how cold gases can be cooled and trapped and discuss the basic physics behind optical lattices. I also discuss experimental probes of these gases, in particular the new high resolution imaging techniques developed recently at Chicago, Munich and Harvard. In Chapter 2, I discuss an early experiment (circa. 2008) which observed long lived spin dynamics in a thermal spin-1/2 Fermi gas. This experiment is an nice illustration of interesting physics resulting from the separation of timescales between spin and collisional dynamics. In my opinion, it is an excellent example of why cold gases are naturally suited to studying non-equilibrium dynamics. I simulate the experiment numerically using a collisionless Boltzmann equation and explain the observed spin dynamics both qualitatively and quantitively. In Chapter 3, I continue the discussion of spin waves in thermal gases by extending previous works on spin-1/2 gases to spin-1 Bose gases. In contrast to Chapter 2, the bulk of the work in this Chapter is analytic in nature. In particular, I find a spin wave instability in the thermal spin-1 Bose gas, which is the high temperature analog of the polar to ferromagnetic transition in a spin-1 Bose Einstein condensate. In Chapter 3, I turn my attention to bosonic systems and briefly review the the Bogoliubov mean-field theory. I calculate the momentum distribution and density-density correlation function of an interacting Bose gas within the Bogoliubov framework. Then I consider bosons in an optical lattice, and introduce the Bose Hubbard model. I calculate the mean-field phase diagram of the Bose Hubbard model and then consider fluctuations about the mean field, and derive the excitation spectrum of the lattice gas in the superfluid and insulating regimes. In Chapter 4, I ask what we learn by studying the dynamics of correlation functions following a sudden change in the interactions in a superfluid. Using the Bogoliubov theory developed in Chapter 3, I will show how the underlying excitation spectrum influences the long and short time behavior of the correlation functions. By considering a lattice dispersion, I study the analogous problem in a weak optical lattice and discuss how the lattice dispersion leads to additional features in the correlation functions. I will also discuss the timescale governing the revival of the condensate fraction in a quantum depleted gas. In Chapter 5, I derive equations of motion governing the dynamics of one and two body correlation functions in the single-band Bose Hubbard model, applicable to bosons in deep lattices. I then consider a simple quench from a Mott insulating initial state to a weakly interacting final state and produce analytic expressions describing the dynamics of correlations following such a quench. I discuss the timescale for the development of long range order following such a quench. I study the problem of chapter 4 using an equations of motion approach. This approach complements the Bogoliubov approach of Chapter 4. First, I derive exact expressions for a quench to a non-interacting state. I then consider how interactions redistribute quasi-momentum to first order in perturbation theory in different dimensions. In Chapter 6, I calculate the relevant timescales for local and global dynamics in trapped lattice Bose gases, a work done in collaboration with Dr. Kaden R. A Hazzard. Using a time-dependent Gutzwiller mean-field theory, I show that the timescale for local equilibration in these systems is fast in experimental terms. I then show that due to the spatial inhomogeneities inherent to cold gases, achieving global equilibrium can be quite complicated, sometimes taking longer than the lifetime of the experiment, an issue of practical importance to current day experiments. I continue this discussion in Chapter 7 which is a collaborative work with experimentalists David McKay and Prof. Brian DeMarco from the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Using experimental and numerical methods, we show that the rapid timescales for local dynamics in interacting systems invalidates a frequently used cold atom technique for mapping out the momentum distribution of atoms in an optical lattice.
The dynamics of a one-dimensional two-component Fermi gas in the presence of a quasiperiodic optical lattice (OL) is investigated by means of a density functional theory approach. Inspired by the protocol implemented in recent cold-atom experiments---designed to identify the many-body localization transition---we analyze the relaxation of an initially prepared imbalance between the occupation number of odd and of even sites. For quasidisorder strength beyond the Anderson localization transition, the imbalance survives for long times, indicating the inability of the system to reach local equilibrium. The late-time value of the imbalance diminishes for increasing interaction strength. Close to the critical quasidisorder strength corresponding to the noninteracting (Anderson) transition, the interacting system displays an extremely slow relaxation dynamics, consistent with subdiffusive behavior. The amplitude of the imbalance fluctuations around its running average is found to decrease with time, and such damping is more effective with increasing interaction strengths. While our study addresses the setup with two equally intense OLs, very similar effects due to interactions have been observed also in recent cold-atom experiments performed in the tight-binding regime, i.e., where one of the two OLs is very deep and the other is much weaker.
Ultracold dilute atomic gases are highly controllable systems whose properties are fundamentally determined by the interatomic interactions.In typical experiments on ultra cold gases particles interact dominantly via a short-range isotropic potential.However, during the last years a new generation of experiments is starting to explore systems, where an additional interaction, the long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction plays a significant or possibly dominant role.The effects induced by the anisotropy of the dipole-dipole interaction are crucially enhanced if the dipolar gas is confined in a deep optical lattice.In this thesis we study novel phenomena in such systems of dipolar gases in deep optical lattices.The nonlocal nonlinearity introduced by the dipole-dipole interaction plays a crucial role in the physics of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates.In particular, it may distort significantly the stability of straight vortex lines.Remarkably, in the presence of a periodic potential along the vortex line, the spectrum of transverse modes shows a roton-like minimum, which eventually destabilizes the straight vortex when the BEC as a whole is still stable, opening the possibility for new scenarios for vortex line configurations in dipolar gases.We have analyzed this instability, and showed that it leads to a second-order-like phase transition from a straight vortex line into novel helical or snake-like configurations, depending on the dipole orientation.Strong 1D lattices usually lead to unconnected two-dimensional gases.The long-range character of the dipole-dipole interactions leads to a novel scenario where non-overlapping gases at different sites may interact significantly.We show that the excitations of non-overlapping condensates in 1D optical lattices acquire a band-like character, being collectively shared by different sites.In particular, the hybridization of the modes significantly enhances the rotonization of the excitations, and may induce roton-instability.We discuss the observability of this effect in on-going experiments.Fermionic polar molecules in deep 1D optical lattices may form selfassembled filaments when the electric dipoles are oriented along the lattice axis.These composites are bosons or fermions depending on the number of molecules per chain, leading to a peculiar and complex Bose-Fermi mixture, vi which we discuss in detail for the simplest case of a three-well potential.We show that the interplay between filament binding energy, transverse filament modes, and trimer Fermi energy leads to a rich variety of possible scenarios ranging from a degenerate Fermi gas of trimers to a binary mixture of two different types of bosonic dimers.We study the intriguing zero temperature and finite temperature physics of these composites for the particular case of an ideal filament gas loaded in 1D sites, and discuss possible methods to probe these chain mixtures.