Already a few bosons with contact interparticle interactions in small optical lattices feature a variety of quantum phases: superfluid, Mott-insulator, and fermionized Tonks gases can be probed in such systems. To detect these phases---pivotal for both experiment and theory---as well as their many-body properties we analyze several distinct measures for the one-body and many-body Shannon information entropies. We exemplify the connection of these entropies with spatial correlations in the many-body state by contrasting them to the Glauber normalized correlation functions. To obtain the ground state for lattices with commensurate filling (i.e., an integer number of particles per site) for the full range of repulsive interparticle interactions we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) in order to solve the many-boson Schr\"odinger equation. We demonstrate that all emergent phases---the superfluid, the Mott insulator, and the fermionized gas can be characterized equivalently by many-body entropy measures and by Glauber's normalized correlation functions. In sharp contrast, single-particle entropy cannot capture these phases.
Already a few bosons with contact interparticle interactions in small optical lattices feature a variety of quantum phases: superfluid, Mott-insulator, and fermionized Tonks gases can be probed in such systems. To detect these phases---pivotal for both experiment and theory---as well as their many-body properties we analyze several distinct measures for the one-body and many-body Shannon information entropies. We exemplify the connection of these entropies with spatial correlations in the many-body state by contrasting them to the Glauber normalized correlation functions. To obtain the ground state for lattices with commensurate filling (i.e., an integer number of particles per site) for the full range of repulsive interparticle interactions we utilize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) in order to solve the many-boson Schr"odinger equation. We demonstrate that all emergent phases---the superfluid, the Mott insulator, and the fermionized gas can be characterized equivalently by many-body entropy measures and by Glauber's normalized correlation functions. In sharp contrast, single-particle entropy cannot capture these phases.
We explore the consequences of disorder on phase coherence in the Mott insulator phases in an optical lattice. Few bosons with contact interaction in small optical lattice can feature varieties of insulating phases---weakly interacting Mott in deep lattice, maximally fragmented and strongly interacting Mott in intermediate lattice, weak Mott with double filling and intrawell coherence, fermionized Mott with strong intrawell coherence. Utilization of the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons to solve the many-boson Schr\"odinger equation, facilitates to understand the microscopic effect of disorder on the different kinds of Mott phases in the primary lattice. The many-body properties are analyzed by distinct measures of the reduced one-body density in real and momentum space, fragmentation, order parameter, variance of spatial single-shot measurements, compressibility, and the Glauber normalized correlation functions. We find very complex competition of localization due to disorder and Mott correlation. We observe distinct response of four different Mott phases in the disordered lattice. When the weakly interacting Mott exhibits the Bose glass phase, the strongly correlated and fully fragmented Mott exhibits leakage, melting and central localization. In contrast, weak Mott with double filling which is a spatially separated dimer in each site, exhibits only some dissociation of intrawell coherence and assist in the development of interwell coherence in the presence of strong disorder. For the fermionized Mott, when the density in each well is fragmented, strong disorder interferes with the intrawell correlation and the characteristic dip in each site starts to disappear leading to simple Mott localization with a pair of bosons.
This work reports the different information theoretic measures, i.e., Shannon information entropy, order, disorder, complexity, and their dynamical measure for the interacting bosons in an optical lattice with both commensurate and incommensurate filling factor. We solve the many-body Schrödinger equation from first principles by multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method which calculates all the measures with high level of accuracy. We find for both relaxed state as well as quenched state the López-Ruiz-Mancini-Calbet (LMC) measure of complexity is the most efficient depictor of superfluid (SF) to Mott-insulator transition. In the quench dynamics, the distinct structure of LMC complexity can be used as a "figure of merit" to obtain the timescale of SF to Mott state entry, Mott holding time, and the Mott state to SF state entry in the successive cycles. We also find that fluctuations in the dynamics of LMC complexity measure for incommensurate filling clearly establish that superfluid to Mott-insulator transition is incomplete. We overall conclude that distinct structure in the complexity makes it more sensitive than the standard use of Shannon information entropy.
We investigate the dynamics of a few bosons in an optical lattice induced by a quantum quench of a parameter of the many-body Hamiltonian. The evolution of the many-body wave function is obtained by solving the time-dependent many-body Schrödinger equation numerically, using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). We report the time evolution of three key quantities, namely, the occupations of the natural orbitals, that is, the eigenvalues of the one-body reduced density matrix, the many-body Shannon information entropy, and the quantum fidelity for a wide range of interactions. Our key motivation is to characterize relaxation processes where various observables of an isolated and interacting quantum many-body system dynamically converge to equilibrium values via the quantum fidelity and via the production of many-body entropy. The interaction, as a parameter, can induce a phase transition in the ground state of the system from a superfluid (SF) state to a Mott-insulator (MI) state. We show that, for a quench to a weak interaction, the fidelity remains close to unity and the entropy exhibits oscillations. Whereas for a quench to strong interactions (SF to MI transition), the relaxation process is characterized by the first collapse of the quantum fidelity and entropy saturation to an equilibrium value. The dip and the non-analytic nature of quantum fidelity is a hallmark of dynamical quantum phase transitions. We quantify the characteristic time at which the quantum fidelity collapses and the entropy saturates.
Strongly interacting finite ensembles of dipolar bosons in commensurately filled one-dimensional optical lattices exhibit diverse quantum phases that are rich in physics. As the strength of the long-range boson–boson interaction increases, the system transitions across different phases: from a superfluid, through a Mott-insulator and a Tonks–Girardeau gas to a crystal state. The signature of these phases and their transitions can be unequivocally identified by an experimentally detectable order parameter, recently described in Phys. Rev. A 98 235301 (2018 [ 33 ]). Herein, we calculate the momentum distributions and the normalized Glauber correlation functions of dipolar bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice in order to characterize all their phases. To understand the behavior of the correlations across the phase transitions, we first investigate the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the one-body reduced density matrix as a function of the dipolar interaction strength. We then analyze the real- and momentum-space Glauber correlation functions, thereby gaining a spatially and momentum-resolved insight into the coherence properties of these quantum phases. We find an intriguing structure of non-local correlations that, independently of other observables, reveal the phase transitions of the system. In particular, spatial localization and momentum delocalization accompany the formation of correlated islands in the density as interactions become stronger. Our study showcases that precise control of intersite correlations is possible through the manipulation of the depth of the lattice, while intrasite correlations can be influenced by changing the dipolar interaction strength.
We study the quantum many-body dynamics and the entropy production triggered by an interaction quench in a system of N=10 interacting identical bosons in an external one-dimensional harmonic trap. The multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB) is used for solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation at a high level of accuracy. We consider many-body entropy measures such as the Shannon information entropy, number of principal components, and occupation entropy that are computed from the time-dependent many-body basis set used in MCTDHB. These measures quantify relevant physical features such as irregular or chaotic dynamics, statistical relaxation, and thermalization. We monitor the entropy measures as a function of time and assess how they depend on the interaction strength. For larger interaction strength, the many-body information and occupation entropies approach the value predicted for the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble of random matrices. This implies statistical relaxation. The basis states of MCTDHB are explicitly time-dependent and optimized by the variational principle in a way that minimizes the number of significantly contributing ones. It is therefore a nontrivial fact that statistical relaxation prevails in MCTDHB computations. Moreover, we demonstrate a fundamental connection between the production of entropy, the buildup of correlations and loss of coherence in the system. Our findings imply that mean-field approaches such as the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation cannot capture statistical relaxation and thermalization because they neglect correlations. Since the coherence and correlations are experimentally accessible, their present connection to many-body entropies can be scrutinized to detect statistical relaxation. In this work we use the recent recursive software implementation of the MCTDHB (R-MCTDHB).
We study the ground state phases of Bose-Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional optical lattices with quantum Monte Carlo simulations using the canonical worm algorithm. Depending on the filling of bosons and fermions, and the on-site intra- and interspecies interaction, different kinds of incompressible and superfluid phases appear. On the compressible side, correlations between bosons and fermions can lead to a distinctive behavior of the bosonic superfluid density and the fermionic stiffness, as well as of the equal-time Green functions, which allow one to identify regions where the two species exhibit anticorrelated flow. We present here complete phase diagrams for these systems at different fillings and as a function of the interaction parameters.