Abstract This article provides a synopsis of our recent experimental work exploring Bose–Einstein condensation in metastable higher Bloch bands of optical lattices. Bipartite lattice geometries have allowed us to implement appropriate band structures, which meet three basic requirements: the existence of metastable excited states sufficiently protected from collisional band relaxation, a mechanism to excite the atoms initially prepared in the lowest band with moderate entropy increase, and the possibility of cross-dimensional tunneling dynamics, necessary to establish coherence along all lattice axes. A variety of bands can be selectively populated and a subsequent thermalization process leads to the formation of a condensate in the lowest energy state of the chosen band. As examples the 2nd, 4th and 7th bands in a bipartite square lattice are discussed. The geometry of the 2nd and 7th bands can be tuned such that two inequivalent energetically degenerate energy minima arise at the X ± -points at the edge of the 1st Brillouin zone. In this case even a small interaction energy is sufficient to lock the phase between the two condensation points such that a complex-valued chiral superfluid order parameter can emerge, which breaks time reversal symmetry. In the 4th band a condensate can be formed at the Γ-point in the center of the 1st Brillouin zone, which can be used to explore topologically protected band touching points. The new techniques to access orbital degrees of freedom in higher bands greatly extend the class of many-body scenarios that can be explored with bosons in optical lattices.
We study the formation and collision-aided decay of an ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in the first excited band of a double-well two-dimensional optical lattice with weak harmonic confinement in the perpendicular
z direction. This lattice geometry is based on an experiment by Wirth et al. [Nat. Phys. 7, 147 (2010)]. The double well is asymmetric, with the local ground state in the shallow well nearly degenerate with the first excited state of the adjacent deep well. We compare the band structure obtained from a tight-binding model with that obtained numerically using a plane-wave basis. We find the tight-binding model to be in quantitative agreement for the lowest two bands, in qualitative agreement for the next two bands, and inadequate for even higher excited bands. The bandwidths of the excited bands are much larger than the harmonic-oscillator energy spacing in the
z direction. We then study the thermodynamics of a noninteracting Bose gas in the first excited band. We estimate the condensate fraction and critical temperature
Tc as functions of the lattice parameters. For typical atom numbers, the critical energy
kBTc, with
kB the Boltzmann constant, is larger than the excited bandwidths and harmonic-oscillator energy. Using conservation of total energy and atom number, we show that the temperature increases after the lattice transformation. Finally, we estimate the time scale for a two-body collision-aided decay of the condensate as a function of the lattice parameters. The decay involves two processes, the dominant one in which both colliding atoms decay to the ground band, and the second involving excitation of one atom to a higher band. For this estimate, we have used tight-binding wave functions for the lowest four bands and numerical estimates for higher bands. The decay rate rapidly increases with lattice depth, but close to the critical temperature, it stays smaller than the tunneling rate between the
s and
p orbitals in adjacent wells.
We study ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with two local minima per unit cell and show that the low-energy states of a multiband Bose-Hubbard (BH) Hamiltonian with only pairwise interactions are equivalent to an effective single-band Hamiltonian with strong three-body interactions. We focus on a double-well optical lattice with a symmetric double well along the
x axis and single-well structure along the perpendicular directions. Tunneling and two-body interaction energies are obtained from an exact band-structure calculation and numerically constructed Wannier functions in order to construct a BH Hamiltonian spanning the lowest two bands. Our effective Hamiltonian is constructed from the ground state of the
N-atom Hamiltonian for each unit cell obtained within the subspace spanned by the Wannier functions of the two lowest bands. The model includes hopping between ground states of neighboring unit cells. We show that such an effective Hamiltonian has strong three-body interactions that can be easily tuned by changing the lattice parameters. Finally, relying on numerical mean-field simulations, we show that the effective Hamiltonian is an excellent approximation of the two-band BH Hamiltonian over a wide range of lattice parameters, in both the superfluid and Mott insulator regions.
Mean-field Bloch bands of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a honeycomb optical lattice are computed. We find that the topological structure of the Bloch bands at the Dirac point is changed completely by atomic interaction of arbitrary small strength: the Dirac point is extended into a closed curve and an intersecting tube structure arises around the original Dirac point. These tubed Bloch bands are caused by the superfluidity of the system. Furthermore, they imply the inadequacy of the tight-binding model to describe an interacting Boson system around the Dirac point and the breakdown of adiabaticity by interaction of arbitrary small strength.
Ultracold atoms in an optical lattice Bloch oscillate when subject to a constant force. In the first work presented in this thesis we have theoretically studied the scenario where the optical lattice potential is provided by the electric field inside an optical cavity. The coherent atom-light interaction in a cavity gives rise to a backaction effect on the light field which can modify the intracavity field amplitude and phase. In our first treatment of this problem we model the cavity light field and atoms by classical fields and solve the coupled atom-light equations of motion. As a result, we find that the amplitude and phase of the transmitted light field is modulated at the Bloch frequency. Remarkably, the Bloch frequency itself is not modified by the backaction. Thus the transmitted light field can be used to observe the oscillations continuously, allowing high-precision measurement with small clouds of atoms. In the second problem presented in this thesis, we explore the band structure of the steady state solutions of the atom-cavity system. A crucial first step towards determining the band structure is the identification of an energy functional that describes the coupled atom-light system. Although, we do not include direct atom-atom interactions in our models, the coupling of the atoms to the single mode light field of the cavity introduces an effective mutual interaction which is correctly taken into account by the energy functional we introduce. Corresponding to each point in the band there exists a steady state light field associated with an average cavity photon number. The dispersive nonlinear atom-light interaction can lead to bistable solutions for this intracavity photon number. For parameters where the atom-cavity system exhibits bistability, the atomic band structure develops loop structures akin to the ones predicted for Bose-Einstein condensates in ordinary (non-cavity) optical lattices. However, in our case the nonlinearity derives from the cavity backaction rather than from direct interatomic interactions. We find both bi- and tri-stable regimes associated with the lowest band, and show that the multistability we observe can be analysed in terms of swallowtail catastrophes. Dynamic and energetic stability of the meanfield solutions is also studied, and we show that the bistable solutions have, as expected, one unstable and two stable branches. The presence of loops in the band structure can lead to a breakdown in adiabaticity during Bloch oscillations as the entire band is sampled during the dynamics. We therefore use the insight gleaned from this work in choosing parameters for the Bloch oscillation measurement proposal presented in the rest of the thesis. In the third work presented in the thesis, we go beyond the mean field description and consider effects of the quantised nature of the light and atomic fields. The cavity light field is always in contact with external electromagnetic fields through the partially transmissive mirrors. This coupling to the external modes enters as quantum noise in the dynamics of the intracavity field and can also be viewed as a manifestation of quantum measurement backaction corresponding to the continuous observation of the transmitted light field. We solve the Heisenberg-Langevin equations for linearized fluctuations about the atomic and optical meanfields and examine how this influences the signal-to-noise ratio of a measurement of external forces using this system. In particular, we investigate the effects of changing the number of atoms, the intracavity lattice depth, and the atom-light coupling strength, and show how resonances between the Bloch oscillation dynamics and the quasiparticle spectrum have a strong influence on the signal-to-noise ratio as well as heating effects. One of the hurdles we overcome along the way is the proper treatment of fluctuations about time-dependent meanfields in the context of cold atom cavity-QED.
We present theoretical and experimental studies of the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional optical lattice and a three-dimensional harmonic trap. For low atom densities and inertial forces, the condensate performs regular Bloch oscillations, and its center-of-mass motion closely follows semiclassical single-particle trajectories, shaped by the lowest-energy band. But in other regimes, the center-of-mass motion disrupts the internal structure of the condensate by generating solitons and vortex rings, which can trigger explosive expansion of the atom cloud. We use images of the atom cloud to provide experimental evidence for this internal disruption, and find that the process occurs most readily in high-density condensates undergoing slow Bloch oscillations.