Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1511.05320 · Physical Review A

Multiple transitions of coupled atom-molecule bosonic mixtures in two dimensions

Laurent de Forges de Parny, Adam Rançon, Tommaso Roscilde

Published Feb 24, 2016• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Motivated by the physics of coherently coupled, ultracold atom-molecule mixtures, we investigate a classical model possessing the same symmetry, namely a $\text{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetry, associated with the mass conservation in the mixture [U(1) symmetry], times the ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetry in the phase relationship between atoms and molecules. In two spatial dimensions the latter symmetry can lead to a finite-temperature Ising transition, associated with (quasi) phase locking between the atoms and the molecules. On the other hand, the U(1) symmetry has an associated Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition towards quasicondensation of atoms or molecules. The existence of the two transitions is found to depend crucially on the population imbalance (or detuning) between atoms and molecules: When the molecules are the majority in the system, their BKT quasicondensation transition occurs at a higher temperature than that of the atoms; the latter has the unconventional nature of an Ising (quasi) phase-locking transition, lacking a finite local order parameter below the critical temperature. When the balance is gradually biased towards the atoms, the two transitions merge together to leave out a unique BKT transition, at which both atoms and molecules acquire quasi-long-range correlations, but only atoms exhibit conventional BKT criticality, with binding of vortex-antivortex pairs into short-range dipoles. The molecular vortex-antivortex excitations bind as well, but undergo a marked crossover from a high-temperature regime in which they are weakly bound, to a low-temperature regime of strong binding, reminiscent of their transition in the absence of atom-molecule coupling.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.023639

Related papers

Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition of Two-Component Bose Mixtures with Intercomponent Josephson Coupling

Michikazu Kobayashi, Minoru Eto, Muneto Nitta

We study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition of two-component Bose mixtures in two spatial dimensions. When phases of both components are decoupled, half-quantized vortex-antivortex pairs of each component induce two-step BKT transitions. On the other hand, when phases of both components are synchronized through the intercomponent Josephson coupling, two species of vortices of each component are bound to form a molecule, and, in this case, we find that there is only one BKT transition by molecule-antimolecule pairs. Our results can be tested by two weakly connected Bose systems such as two-component ultracold diluted Bose mixtures with the Rabi oscillation, and multiband superconductors.

arXiv:1802.08763•Physical Review Letters•Aug 16, 2019•45 citations

Quantum and thermal phase transitions in a bosonic atom-molecule mixture in a two-dimensional optical lattice

Laurent de Forges de Parny, V. G. Rousseau

We study the ground state and the thermal phase diagram of a two-species Bose-Hubbard model, with $\text{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetry, describing atoms and molecules on a two-dimensional optical lattice interacting via a Feshbach resonance. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field theory, we show that the conversion between the two species, coherently coupling the atomic and molecular states, has a crucial impact on the Mott-superfluid transition and stabilizes an insulating phase with a gap controlled by the conversion term---the Feshbach insulator---instead of a standard Mott-insulating phase. Depending on the detuning between atoms and molecules, this model exhibits three phases: the Feshbach insulator, a molecular condensate coexisting with noncondensed atoms, and a mixed atomic-molecular condensate. Employing finite-size scaling analysis, we observe three-dimensional (3D) $XY$ (3D Ising) transition when $\text{U}(1)$ (${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$) symmetry is broken, whereas the transition is first order when both $\text{U}(1)$ and ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetries are spontaneously broken. The finite-temperature phase diagram is also discussed. The thermal disappearance of the molecular superfluid leads to a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition with unusual universal jump in the superfluid density. The loss of the quasi-long-range coherence of the mixed atomic and molecular superfluid is more subtle since only atoms exhibit conventional Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless criticality. We also observe a signal compatible with a classical first-order transition between the mixed superfluid and the normal Bose liquid at low temperature.

arXiv:1607.03248•Physical Review A•Jan 5, 2017•7 citations

Vortex pairing in two-dimensional Bose gases

Christopher J. Foster, P. B. Blakie, Matthew J. Davis

Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. Although this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model. We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction. By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure. Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.

arXiv:0912.1675•Physical Review A•Feb 24, 2010•64 citations

The Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition in imbalanced 2D Fermi gases: The role of fluctuations

Jacques Tempere, Serghei N. Klimin, J. T. Devreese

Abstract The physics of two-dimensional (2D) quantum gases can be revealed in strongly confining optical lattices. Upon cooling, 2D bosonic quantum gases as well as Fermi gases where pairing is present, become superfluid. The superfluid-to-normal transition is no longer governed by the presence or absence of a condensate, but by the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) mechanism: above a critical temperature, vortices and antivortices proliferate and destroy phase coherence. We investigate the BKT transition for superfluid 2D Fermi gases in the whole range of the BCS–BEC crossover, from weakly bound Cooper pairing (the BCS state), up to strongly bound molecules (the BEC state). Using a path-integral description, we then focus on the case of imbalanced gases: when the number of ‘spin-up’ and ‘spin-down’ fermions that form the pair is no longer equal. When an excess of one spin species exists, pairing is frustrated and the vortex energetics is strongly affected, influencing the KT mechanism. In the present work we are concentrated on the effect of both phase and amplitude fluctuations on phase diagrams of the fermion system. The amplitude fluctuations only slightly influence the BKT phase transition temperature. However, they lead to a substantial modification of the complete phase diagram for the Fermi gas in 2D with respect to that obtained taking into account only phase fluctuations.

Physica C Superconductivity•Feb 24, 2010•3 citations

All-temperature superfluidity in two dimensions

Bilal Hawashin, Soumyadeep Chaudhuri, Igor F. Herbut +1 more

In local theories with short-range interactions, continuous symmetries cannot be spontaneously broken in two spatial dimensions at nonzero temperature. $\mathrm{U}(1)$-symmetric models instead admit a Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless (BKT) phase with quasi-long-range order and nonzero phase stiffness, which is normally destroyed at high temperatures by vortex proliferation. Here, we show that a BKT phase, and with it superfluidity, can persist to arbitrarily high temperatures. Using the large-$N$ expansion, we study a $(2+1)$-dimensional quantum field theory in which a complex scalar is coupled to the critical $\mathrm{O}(N)$ model. At the biconical fixed point, where the inter-sector coupling is negative, the thermal effective potential has a circle of minima with nonzero $\mathrm{U}(1)$ amplitude. Integrating out the gapped fluctuations yields an effective theory for the compact phase mode at distances large compared to $1/T$. Since temperature is the only scale at the fixed point, the phase stiffness grows linearly with temperature, with a proportionality factor that scales linearly with $N$ and is fixed entirely by the fixed point. This renders vortex operators irrelevant for sufficiently large $N$. We further show that the vortex fugacity is exponentially small in $N$.

arXiv:2610.20717•Oct 14, 2026•0 citations

Ultracold gases in two dimensions : novel superfluid phases for bosons and fermions

Lih-King Lim

This thesis concerns ultracold two-dimensional atomic gases and the associated novel superfluid phases in an optical lattice subjected to staggered rotations. In the first part, we study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition in a two-dimensional Bose gas. Motivated by recent experiments on the cold gas in the BKT regime, we employ a modified Popov theory and a renormalization group theory to describe the system. The two-dimensional renormalization group flow equations display unique features, which we interpret as precursors of the BKT physics. We further calculate higher correlation functions close to the BKT transition, which can serve as observables for detecting effects beyond mean-field. Finally, we obtain the density profile under the conditions of the experiment performed in the group of Dalibard in Paris, France. In the second part of the thesis, we study a recent experimental proposal of a time-dependent optical lattice with staggered rotations. We show that in the tight-binding regime, the system can be effectively described by a (Bose-)Hubbard model subjected to an artificial staggered magnetic field. The staggered magnetic field (flux) in the lattice leads to conical points in the band structure which possesses distinct minima for different strength, and can give rise to Dirac-like dispersions. For bosons, we show that besides the homogenous superfluid phase, a staggered-vortex superfluid phase is stabilized for large flux values. We show that the staggered flux renormalizes the phase boundary and find a multi-critical point separating the two superfluid phases and the Mott insulating phase. Finally, the full phase diagram of the generalized Bose-Hubbard model at zero temperature is determined. We then generalize the model for a mixture of ultracold bosons and spin-1/2 fermions. By using the Bogoliubov theory for the bosonic sector, we show that the bosonic superfluid mediates attractive interactions between fermions up to the nearest-neighbor site. The resulting model is an extended Hubbard model in the presence of a staggered magnetic field, where the on-site and the nearest-neighbor attractive interactions can be tuned independently. We then employ the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory for superconductivity, by considering an on-site pairing order parameter competing with a nearest-neighbor resonating-valence-bond order parameter. Due to conical points in the energy band, the system possesses quantum critical property and the resulting phase diagram displays features which are strikingly similar to that of high-critical-temperature superconductors or heavy-fermion superconductors.

•Jan 1, 2006•0 citations
Motivated by the physics of coherently coupled, ultracold atom-molecule mixtures, we investigate a classical model possessing the same symmetry, namely a U(1)\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiZ2\text{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}U(1)\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fiZ2​ symmetry, associated with the mass conservation in the mixture [U(1) symmetry], times the Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ symmetry in the phase relationship between atoms and molecules. In two spatial dimensions the latter symmetry can lead to a finite-temperature Ising transition, associated with (quasi) phase locking between the atoms and the molecules. On the other hand, the U(1) symmetry has an associated Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition towards quasicondensation of atoms or molecules. The existence of the two transitions is found to depend crucially on the population imbalance (or detuning) between atoms and molecules: When the molecules are the majority in the system, their BKT quasicondensation transition occurs at a higher temperature than that of the atoms; the latter has the unconventional nature of an Ising (quasi) phase-locking transition, lacking a finite local order parameter below the critical temperature. When the balance is gradually biased towards the atoms, the two transitions merge together to leave out a unique BKT transition, at which both atoms and molecules acquire quasi-long-range correlations, but only atoms exhibit conventional BKT criticality, with binding of vortex-antivortex pairs into short-range dipoles. The molecular vortex-antivortex excitations bind as well, but undergo a marked crossover from a high-temperature regime in which they are weakly bound, to a low-temperature regime of strong binding, reminiscent of their transition in the absence of atom-molecule coupling.
We study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition of two-component Bose mixtures in two spatial dimensions. When phases of both components are decoupled, half-quantized vortex-antivortex pairs of each component induce two-step BKT transitions. On the other hand, when phases of both components are synchronized through the intercomponent Josephson coupling, two species of vortices of each component are bound to form a molecule, and, in this case, we find that there is only one BKT transition by molecule-antimolecule pairs. Our results can be tested by two weakly connected Bose systems such as two-component ultracold diluted Bose mixtures with the Rabi oscillation, and multiband superconductors.
We study the ground state and the thermal phase diagram of a two-species Bose-Hubbard model, with $\text{U}(1)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetry, describing atoms and molecules on a two-dimensional optical lattice interacting via a Feshbach resonance. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field theory, we show that the conversion between the two species, coherently coupling the atomic and molecular states, has a crucial impact on the Mott-superfluid transition and stabilizes an insulating phase with a gap controlled by the conversion term---the Feshbach insulator---instead of a standard Mott-insulating phase. Depending on the detuning between atoms and molecules, this model exhibits three phases: the Feshbach insulator, a molecular condensate coexisting with noncondensed atoms, and a mixed atomic-molecular condensate. Employing finite-size scaling analysis, we observe three-dimensional (3D) XYXYXY (3D Ising) transition when U(1)\text{U}(1)U(1) (Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​) symmetry is broken, whereas the transition is first order when both U(1)\text{U}(1)U(1) and Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ symmetries are spontaneously broken. The finite-temperature phase diagram is also discussed. The thermal disappearance of the molecular superfluid leads to a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition with unusual universal jump in the superfluid density. The loss of the quasi-long-range coherence of the mixed atomic and molecular superfluid is more subtle since only atoms exhibit conventional Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless criticality. We also observe a signal compatible with a classical first-order transition between the mixed superfluid and the normal Bose liquid at low temperature.
Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. Although this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model. We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction. By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure. Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.
Abstract The physics of two-dimensional (2D) quantum gases can be revealed in strongly confining optical lattices. Upon cooling, 2D bosonic quantum gases as well as Fermi gases where pairing is present, become superfluid. The superfluid-to-normal transition is no longer governed by the presence or absence of a condensate, but by the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) mechanism: above a critical temperature, vortices and antivortices proliferate and destroy phase coherence. We investigate the BKT transition for superfluid 2D Fermi gases in the whole range of the BCS–BEC crossover, from weakly bound Cooper pairing (the BCS state), up to strongly bound molecules (the BEC state). Using a path-integral description, we then focus on the case of imbalanced gases: when the number of ‘spin-up’ and ‘spin-down’ fermions that form the pair is no longer equal. When an excess of one spin species exists, pairing is frustrated and the vortex energetics is strongly affected, influencing the KT mechanism. In the present work we are concentrated on the effect of both phase and amplitude fluctuations on phase diagrams of the fermion system. The amplitude fluctuations only slightly influence the BKT phase transition temperature. However, they lead to a substantial modification of the complete phase diagram for the Fermi gas in 2D with respect to that obtained taking into account only phase fluctuations.
In local theories with short-range interactions, continuous symmetries cannot be spontaneously broken in two spatial dimensions at nonzero temperature. U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1)-symmetric models instead admit a Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless (BKT) phase with quasi-long-range order and nonzero phase stiffness, which is normally destroyed at high temperatures by vortex proliferation. Here, we show that a BKT phase, and with it superfluidity, can persist to arbitrarily high temperatures. Using the large-NNN expansion, we study a (2+1)(2+1)(2+1)-dimensional quantum field theory in which a complex scalar is coupled to the critical O(N)\mathrm{O}(N)O(N) model. At the biconical fixed point, where the inter-sector coupling is negative, the thermal effective potential has a circle of minima with nonzero U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) amplitude. Integrating out the gapped fluctuations yields an effective theory for the compact phase mode at distances large compared to 1/T1/T1/T. Since temperature is the only scale at the fixed point, the phase stiffness grows linearly with temperature, with a proportionality factor that scales linearly with NNN and is fixed entirely by the fixed point. This renders vortex operators irrelevant for sufficiently large NNN. We further show that the vortex fugacity is exponentially small in NNN.
This thesis concerns ultracold two-dimensional atomic gases and the associated novel superfluid phases in an optical lattice subjected to staggered rotations. In the first part, we study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition in a two-dimensional Bose gas. Motivated by recent experiments on the cold gas in the BKT regime, we employ a modified Popov theory and a renormalization group theory to describe the system. The two-dimensional renormalization group flow equations display unique features, which we interpret as precursors of the BKT physics. We further calculate higher correlation functions close to the BKT transition, which can serve as observables for detecting effects beyond mean-field. Finally, we obtain the density profile under the conditions of the experiment performed in the group of Dalibard in Paris, France. In the second part of the thesis, we study a recent experimental proposal of a time-dependent optical lattice with staggered rotations. We show that in the tight-binding regime, the system can be effectively described by a (Bose-)Hubbard model subjected to an artificial staggered magnetic field. The staggered magnetic field (flux) in the lattice leads to conical points in the band structure which possesses distinct minima for different strength, and can give rise to Dirac-like dispersions. For bosons, we show that besides the homogenous superfluid phase, a staggered-vortex superfluid phase is stabilized for large flux values. We show that the staggered flux renormalizes the phase boundary and find a multi-critical point separating the two superfluid phases and the Mott insulating phase. Finally, the full phase diagram of the generalized Bose-Hubbard model at zero temperature is determined. We then generalize the model for a mixture of ultracold bosons and spin-1/2 fermions. By using the Bogoliubov theory for the bosonic sector, we show that the bosonic superfluid mediates attractive interactions between fermions up to the nearest-neighbor site. The resulting model is an extended Hubbard model in the presence of a staggered magnetic field, where the on-site and the nearest-neighbor attractive interactions can be tuned independently. We then employ the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory for superconductivity, by considering an on-site pairing order parameter competing with a nearest-neighbor resonating-valence-bond order parameter. Due to conical points in the energy band, the system possesses quantum critical property and the resulting phase diagram displays features which are strikingly similar to that of high-critical-temperature superconductors or heavy-fermion superconductors.