The strongly correlated bosons in flat-band systems are an excellent platform to study a wide range of quantum phenomena. Such systems can be realized in optical lattices filled with ultracold atomic gases. In this paper we study the Bose-Hubbard model in the Lieb lattice by means of the time-dependent Gutzwiller mean-field approach. We find that in the Mott insulator phase the excitation modes are gapped and display purely particle or purely hole character, while in the superfluid phase the excitation spectrum is gapless. The geometry of the Lieb lattice leads to a nonuniform order parameter and nonuniform oscillation energy in the ground state. This results in additional anticrossings between dispersive bands in the excitation spectra, while the flat bands remain insensitive to this effect. We analyze the oscillations of the order parameter on the sublattices as well as the particle-hole character of the excitations. For certain model parameters we find simultaneous pure phase and pure amplitude oscillations within the same mode, separated between the sublattices. Also, we propose a simple method to differentiate between the hole and particle superfluid regions in the Lieb lattice by in situ measurement of the atom population on the sublattices.
The strongly correlated bosons in flat-band systems are an excellent platform to study a wide range of quantum phenomena. Such systems can be realized in optical lattices filled with ultracold atomic gases. In this paper we study the Bose-Hubbard model in the Lieb lattice by means of the time-dependent Gutzwiller mean-field approach. We find that in the Mott insulator phase the excitation modes are gapped and display purely particle or purely hole character, while in the superfluid phase the excitation spectrum is gapless. The geometry of the Lieb lattice leads to a nonuniform order parameter and nonuniform oscillation energy in the ground state. This results in additional anticrossings between dispersive bands in the excitation spectra, while the flat bands remain insensitive to this effect. We analyze the oscillations of the order parameter on the sublattices as well as the particle-hole character of the excitations. For certain model parameters we find simultaneous pure phase and pure amplitude oscillations within the same mode, separated between the sublattices. Also, we propose a simple method to differentiate between the hole and particle superfluid regions in the Lieb lattice by in situ measurement of the atom population on the sublattices.
Ultracold bosonic gases in optical lattices are strongly correlated quantum systems similar to solids. The strong correlation between the electrons in a solid on the one hand, and the bosonic atoms in optical lattice on the other, exhibit various quantum phenomena like insulation, conductivity, localization of electrons and atoms, respectively. Controlled by the intensity of the lattice laser, the ultracold bosonic gas can be transferred from a regime with superfluid character for shallow lattices into a regime of strong correlations, the Mott insulator. As an additional external parameter besides the lattice depth, one can generate spatial inhomogeneities by superimposing an additional standing wave (so-called two-color superlattices), which gives rise to localization effects or the formation of a Bose-glass phase. In the present work, numerical simulations are employed in order to investigate characteristic signatures of the quantum phases in the low-energy excitation spectrum of one-dimensional systems. We simulate temporal small amplitude modulations of the optical lattice in analogy to experiments, and evaluate the response of the system from the time-evolved initial state. The lattice systems are described in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. For the evaluation of the time-evolved state, we employ several numerical methods. We analyze systems of small size (6 particles on 6 sites) using an exact time-evolution by integration of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The formulation of an importance truncation scheme enables us to retain only the relevant components of the model space in the strongly correlated regime and, thus, allows for the investigation of systems with 10 particles on 10 sites using exact time-evolution. Based on this method, we present results of the Mott-insulating regime as well as for the Bose-glass phase. Furthermore, we employ particle-hole methods, which allow for the treatment of systems with experimental lattice sizes and particle numbers. Starting from the equation of motion method we adapt the Tamm-Dancoff approximation as well as the random-phase approximation for the occupation number representation of the Bose-Hubbard model. We present results of simulations of up to 50 particles on 50 sites and discuss the impact of the lattice depth on the low-energy excitations (U-resonance). Moreover, the impact of a two-color superlattice and the variation of its amplitude is investigated.
We study the low-energy excitations of the Bose-Hubbard model in the strongly interacting superfluid phase using a Gutzwiller approach. We extract the single-particle and single-hole excitation amplitudes for each mode and report emergent mode-dependent particle-hole symmetry on specific arc-shaped lines in the phase diagram connecting the well-known Lorentz-invariant limits of the Bose-Hubbard model. By tracking the in-phase particle-hole symmetric oscillations of the order parameter, we provide an answer to the long-standing question about the fate of the pure amplitude Higgs mode away from the integer-density critical point. Furthermore, we point out that out-of-phase symmetric oscillations in the gapless Goldstone mode are responsible for a full suppression of the condensate density oscillations. Possible detection protocols are also discussed.
We investigate a strongly correlated Bose gas in an optical lattice. Extending the standard-basis operator method developed by Haley and Erd\"os to a boson Hubbard model, we calculate excitation spectra in the superfluid phase, as well as in the Mott insulating phase, at T=0. In the Mott phase, the excitation spectrum has a finite energy gap, reflecting the localized character of atoms. In the superfluid phase, the excitation spectrum is shown to have an itinerant-localized dual structure, where the gapless Bogoliubov mode (which describes the itinerant character of superfluid atoms) and a band with a finite energy gap coexist. We also show that the rf-tunneling current measurement would give useful information about the duality of a strongly correlated superfluid Bose gas near the superfluid-insulator transition.
Motivated by recent developments in the experimental study of Bose-Fermi mixtures, we investigate ground-state phase diagrams and excitation spectra for Bose-Fermi mixtures in a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice. The Gutzwiller approximation is used to identify a new phase in which both superfluid bosons and metal fermions coexist. As a useful probe to identify the quantum phases, we also calculate the excitation spectra. In Mott insulator phase, two excitation features appear in the spectra that correspond to particle and hole excitations. In superfluid phase, there are Bogoliubov modes and amplitude modes. In coexisting phase, two gapless dispersive modes are identified, which shift due to interaction between bosons and fermions.
Spectral properties of the Bose-Hubbard model and a recently proposed coupled-cavity model are studied by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations in one dimension. Both models exhibit a quantum phase transition from a Mott insulator to a superfluid phase. The dynamic structure factor $S(k,\ensuremath{\omega})$ and the single-particle spectrum $A(k,\ensuremath{\omega})$ are calculated, focusing on the parameter region around the phase transition from the Mott insulator with density one to the superfluid phase, where correlations are important. The strongly interacting nature of the superfluid phase manifests itself in terms of additional gapped modes in the spectra. Comparison is made to recent analytical work on the Bose-Hubbard model. Despite some subtle differences due to the polaritonic particles in the cavity model, the gross features are found to be very similar to the Bose-Hubbard case. For the polariton model, emergent particle-hole symmetry near the Mott lobe tip is demonstrated and temperature and detuning effects are analyzed. A scaling analysis for the generic transition suggests mean-field exponents, in accordance with field-theory results.
We study ground-state phase diagrams and excitation spectra of Bose-Bose mixtures in an optical lattice by applying the Gutzwiller approximation to the two-component Bose-Hubbard model. A case of equal hoppings and equal intra-component interactions for both components is considered. Due to the existence of inter-component interaction, there appear several quantum phases, such as the superfluid, paired superfluid, and counterflow superfluid phases. We find that the transition from superfluid (SF) to Mott insulator (MI) with even filling factors can be of the first order for a wide range of the chemical potential. We calculate the excitation spectra as a useful probe to identify the quantum phases and the SF-to-MI transitions. In the excitation spectra of the SF phase, there are two gapless modes and a few gapful modes, which respectively correspond to phase and amplitude fluctuations of the order parameters. At the SF-to-MI transition point, we show that the energy gaps of certain amplitude modes reach zero for the second-order transition while they remain finite for the first-order one. Since the excitation spectrum can be measured by the Bragg scattering, we calculate the dynamical structure factor by using the linear response theory. We consider three types of density fluctuations, and show that the density fluctuations are coupled to different excitation branches in different quantum phases.