At low temperatures bosons typically condense to minimize their single-particle kinetic energy while interactions stabilize superfluidity. Optical lattices with artificial spin-orbit coupling challenge this paradigm, because here kinetic energy can be quenched in an extreme regime where the single-particle band flattens. To probe the fate of superfluidity in the absence of kinetics we construct and numerically solve interaction-only tight-binding models in flatbands. We find that superfluid states arise entirely from interactions operating in quenched kinetic energy bands, thus revealing a distinct and unexpected condensation mechanism. Our results have important implications for the identification of quantum condensed phases of ultracold bosons beyond conventional paradigms.
At low temperatures bosons typically condense to minimize their single-particle kinetic energy while interactions stabilize superfluidity. Optical lattices with artificial spin-orbit coupling challenge this paradigm, because here kinetic energy can be quenched in an extreme regime where the single-particle band flattens. To probe the fate of superfluidity in the absence of kinetics we construct and numerically solve interaction-only tight-binding models in flatbands. We find that superfluid states arise entirely from interactions operating in quenched kinetic energy bands, thus revealing a distinct and unexpected condensation mechanism. Our results have important implications for the identification of quantum condensed phases of ultracold bosons beyond conventional paradigms.
We study the interplay effect of spin-orbit coupling(SOC) and optical lattice to the single-particle physics and superfluid-insulator transition in ultracold Fermi gases. We consider the type of SOC that has been realized in cold atoms experiments via two-photon Raman processes. Our analyses are based on the knowledge of full single-particle spectrum in lattices, without relying on any tightbinding approximation. We point out that the tight-binding models used in literature are either very limited or completely inapplicable in predicting the correct single-particle physics. Moreover, we show that the Raman field (creating SOC) can induce band-gap closing in a two-dimensional optical lattice, leading to the intriguing phenomenon of superfluidity-reentrance for interacting fermions at integer filling. We present the superfluid-insulator phase diagram in a wide parameter regime of chemical potentials and Raman fields. All these results are far beyond any tight-binding model can predict, and can be directly probed in current cold atoms experiments
We study the interplay effect of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and an optical lattice on the single-particle physics and superfluid-insulator transition in ultracold Fermi gases. We consider the type of SOC that has been realized in cold atom experiments via two-photon Raman processes. Our analyses are based on the knowledge of a full single-particle spectrum in lattices without relying on any tight-binding approximation. We evaluate existing tight-binding models and point out their limitations in predicting the correct single-particle physics due to the missed high-band contributions. Moreover, we show that the Raman field (creating SOC) can induce band-gap closing in a two-dimensional optical lattice, leading to the intriguing phenomenon of superfluidity reentrance for interacting fermions at integer filling. We present the superfluid-insulator phase diagram in a wide parameter regime of chemical potentials and Raman fields. All these results are far beyond any that a tight-binding model can predict and can be directly probed in current cold atoms experiments.
Artificial spin-orbit coupling in optical lattices can be engineered to tune band structure into extreme regimes where the single-particle band flattens leaving only interparticle interactions to define many-body states of matter. Lin et al. [F. Lin, C. Zhang, and V. W. Scarola, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 110404 (2014)] showed that under such conditions interactions lead to a Wigner crystal of fermionic atoms under approximate conditions: no bandwidth or band mixing. The excitations were shown to possess emergent kinetics with fractionalized charge derived entirely from interactions. In this work we use numerical exact diagonalization to study a more realistic model with nonzero bandwidth and band mixing. We map out the stability phase diagram of the Wigner crystal. We find that emergent properties of the Wigner crystal excitations remain stable for realistic experimental parameters. Our results validate the approximations made by Lin et al. and define parameter regimes where strong interaction effects generate emergent kinetics in optical lattices.
Ultracold atoms have emerged as an indispensable setting to study quantum many-body systems. Recent experimental and theoretical work has explored the curious phases and novel properties of Bose-Einstein Condensate with optical lattices, and Bose-Einstein Condensate with light-induced artificial spin-orbit coupling. In this thesis, we report our research on these two types of boson systems. In the first topic, in contrast with calculations of bosons in optical lattices that focus on the tight-binding regime, we note that the single-particle states of bosons in a periodic potential generally satisfy the Mathieu equation, and have developed a formalism for studying bosons in an optical lattice using the Mathieu equation. Moreover, based on this formalism, we have proposed a self-consistent scheme for describing interacting bosons in an optical lattice using Hartree Fock approximation. We apply this scheme to quantify the effects of inter-atomic interactions on the properties of bosons in an optical lattice, as exhibited in the comparison between observables of non-interacting and interacting systems, such as the superfluid transition temperature and momentum distribution as probed in time-of-flight expansion. In the second topic, the phases of a Bose-Einstein condensate with light-induced spin-orbit coupling are studied within the mean-field approximation. We obtain the phase diagram at fixed chemical potential and at fixed density for bosons with spin-orbit coupling, finding a regime of phase separation and a regime in which the bosons condensed into a mixed phase. We determine how this phase diagram evolves as a function of the atom interaction parameters and as a function of the strength of light-atom coupling. The mixed phase is found to be stable for sufficiently small light-atom coupling. Specifically, we show that the structure of the phase diagram at fixed chemical potential suggests an unusual density dependence for the mixed phase in a harmonic trapping potential, in which the density of one spin increases with increasing radius, suggesting a unique experimental signature of this state. The collective Bogoliubov sound mode is shown to also provide a signature of the mixed phase, vanishing as the boundary to the regime of phase separation is approached. Together, in these two topics we address the need to enhance the understanding of the unconventional physical properties of Bose-Einstein Condensate in a controlled electromagnetic environment (optical lattices, Raman lasers, etc.), and provide predictions for possible experimental findings.
Recently spin-orbit (SO)-coupled superfluids in free space or harmonic traps have been extensively studied, motivated by the recent experimental realization of SO coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). However, the rich physics of SO-coupled BEC in optical lattices has been largely unexplored. In this paper, we show that in a suitable parameter region the lowest Bloch state forms an isolated flat band in a one-dimensional SO-coupled optical lattice, which thus provides an experimentally feasible platform for exploring the recently celebrated topological flatband physics in lattice systems. We show that the flat band is preserved even with the mean-field interaction in BEC. We investigate the superfluidity of the BEC in SO-coupled lattices through dynamical and Landau stability analysis, and show that the BEC is stable on the whole flat band.
We study fermionic superfluidity in an ultracold Bose-Fermi mixture loaded into a square optical lattice subjected to a staggered flux. While the bosons form a Bose-Einstein condensate at very low temperature and weak interaction, the interacting fermions experience an additional long-ranged attractive interaction mediated by phonons in the bosonic condensate. This leads us to consider a generalized Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor attractive interactions, which give rise to two competing pairing channels. We use the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory to determine the regimes where distinct fermionic superfluids are stabilized and find that the nonlocal pairing channel favors a superfluid state which breaks both the gauge and the lattice symmetries, similar to unconventional superconductivity occurring in some strongly correlated systems. Furthermore, the particular structure of the single-particle spectrum leads to unexpected consequences, for example, a dome-shaped superfluid region in the temperature versus filing fraction phase diagram, with a normal phase that contains much richer physics than a Fermi liquid. Notably, the relevant temperature regime and coupling strength are readily accessible in state of the art experiments with ultracold trapped atoms.