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arXiv:2104.11253 · SciPost Physics

Mott transition in a cavity-boson system: A quantitative comparison between theory and experiment

Rui Lin, Christoph Georges, Jens Klinder, Paolo Molignini, Miriam Büttner, Axel U. J. Lode, R. Chitra, Andreas Hemmerich, Hans Keßler

Published Aug 17, 2021• 24 citations
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Abstract

The competition between short-range and cavity-mediated infinite-range interactions in a cavity-boson system leads to the existence of a superfluid phase and a Mott-insulator phase within the self-organized regime. In this work, we quantitatively compare the steady-state phase boundaries of this transition measured in experiments and simulated using the Multiconfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree Method for Indistinguishable Particles. To make the problem computationally feasible, we represent the full system by the exact many-body wave function of a two-dimensional four-well potential. We argue that the validity of this representation comes from the nature of both the cavity-atomic system and the Bose-Hubbard physics. Additionally, we show that the chosen representation only induces small systematic errors, and that the experimentally measured and theoretically predicted phase boundaries agree reasonably well. We thus demonstrate a new approach for the quantitative numerical modeling for the physics of the superfluid--Mott-insulator phase boundary.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.11.2.030

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The competition between short-range and cavity-mediated infinite-range interactions in a cavity-boson system leads to the existence of a superfluid phase and a Mott-insulator phase within the self-organized regime. In this work, we quantitatively compare the steady-state phase boundaries of this transition measured in experiments and simulated using the Multiconfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree Method for Indistinguishable Particles. To make the problem computationally feasible, we represent the full system by the exact many-body wave function of a two-dimensional four-well potential. We argue that the validity of this representation comes from the nature of both the cavity-atomic system and the Bose-Hubbard physics. Additionally, we show that the chosen representation only induces small systematic errors, and that the experimentally measured and theoretically predicted phase boundaries agree reasonably well. We thus demonstrate a new approach for the quantitative numerical modeling for the physics of the superfluid--Mott-insulator phase boundary.
The Bose-Hubbard model describes the physics of a system of bosonic ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, in which a phase transition is present between a superfluid phase and a Mott insulator one. \nThe exact solution of this Hamiltonian is only feasible to find the ground-state of small systems, while other techniques (as mean-field schemes or quantum Monte Carlo) are necessary to study systems of larger size. \n \nAs a first application, we study the trapped model - relevant for the comparison with current experiments - through an inhomogeneous mean-field scheme. We describe some signatures of the phase crossover between superfluid and Mott insulator. In particular, the visibility of the quasimomentum distribution shows some kinks as a function of the lattice depth; we describe these features and we link them with the ones observed in other works in the literature. \n \nAs a second application, we use quantum Monte Carlo techniques to study the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with long-range interactions and we focus on the appearance of the Haldane insulating phase, distinguishable from the Mott one through the presence of non-local hidden order. \nNon-local correlation functions are also used to describe the difference between the superfluid phase and the Mott insulator one.
We investigate harmonically trapped, laser-pumped bosons with infinite-range interactions induced by a dissipative high-finesse red-detuned optical cavity with numerical and analytical methods. We obtain multiple cavity and atomic observables as well as the full phase diagram of the system using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for indistinguishable particles (MCTDH-X) approach. Besides the transition from an unorganized normal phase to a superradiant phase where the atoms self-organize, we focus on an in-depth investigation of the self-organized superfluid to self-organized Mott-insulator phase transition in the superradiant phase as a function of the cavity-atom coupling. The numerical results are substantiated by an analytical study of an effective Bose-Hubbard model. We numerically analyze cavity fluctuations and emergent strong correlations between atoms in the many-body state across the Mott transition via the atomic density distributions and Glauber correlation functions. Unexpectedly, the weak harmonic trap leads to features like a lattice switching between the two symmetry-broken Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ configurations of the untrapped system and a reentrance of superfluidity in the Mott-insulating phase. Our analytical considerations quantitatively explain the numerically observed correlation features.
The superfluid to Mott insulator transition and the superradiant transition are textbook examples of quantum phase transition and coherent quantum optics, respectively. Recent experiments in ETH and Hamburg have succeeded in loading degenerate bosonic atomic gases in optical lattices inside a cavity, which enables the first experimental study of the interplay between these two transitions. In this Rapid Communication we present the theoretical phase diagram for the ETH Zurich experimental setup, and determine the phase boundaries and the orders of the phase transitions between the normal superfluid phase, the superfluid with superradiant light, the normal Mott insulator, and the Mott insulator with superradiant light. We find that in contrast to the second-order superradiant transition in a weakly interacting Bose condensate, strong correlations in the superfluid nearby a Mott transition can render the superradiant transition to a first-order one. Our results will stimulate further experimental studies of interactions between cavity light and strongly interacting quantum matter.
A high-finesse optical cavity allows the establishment of long-range interactions between bosons in an optical lattice when most cold-atom experiments are restricted to short-range interactions. Supersolid phases have recently been experimentally observed in such systems. Using both exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations and the Gutzwiller approximation, we study the ground-state phase diagrams of a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions which describes such experiments. In addition to superfluid and insulating Mott phases, the infinite-range checkerboard interactions introduce charge-density waves and supersolid phases. We study here the system at various particle densities, elucidate the nature of the phases and quantum phase transitions, and discuss the stability of the phases with respect to phase separation. In particular we confirm the existence and stability of a supersolid phase detected experimentally.
We investigate the superfluid-insulator transition of one-dimensional interacting bosons in both deep and shallow periodic potentials. We compare a theoretical analysis based on quantum Monte Carlo simulations in continuum space and Luttinger liquid approach with experiments on ultracold atoms with tunable interactions and optical lattice depth. Experiments and theory are in excellent agreement. Our study provides a quantitative determination of the critical parameters for the Mott transition and defines the regimes of validity of widely used approximate models, namely, the Bose-Hubbard and sine-Gordon models.
Motivated by experiments performed by Landig et al. [Nature (London) 532, 476 (2016)], we consider a two-dimensional Bose gas in an optical lattice, trapped inside a single mode superradiant Fabry-Perot cavity. The cavity mediates infinite-range checkerboard interactions between the atoms, which produces competition between Mott insulator, charge-density wave, superfluid, and supersolid phases. We calculate the phase diagram of this Bose gas in a homogeneous system and in the presence of a harmonic trap.