We study the Mott phases and superfluid-insulator transition of spin-three bosons in an optical lattice with an anisotropic two-dimensional optical trap. We chart out the phase diagrams for Mott states with
n=1 and
n=2 atoms per lattice site. It is shown that the long-range dipolar interaction stabilizes a state where the chains of the ferromagnetically aligned spins run along the longer trap direction while the spin ordering is staggered between nearby chains, leading to an antiferromagnetic ordering along the shorter trap direction. We also obtain the mean-field phase boundary for the superfluid-insulator transition in these systems and study the nature of spin ordering in the superfluid state near the transition. We show that, inside the superfluid phase and near the superfluid-insulator phase boundary, the system undergoes a first-order antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin ordering transition. We discuss implications of our results for
52Cr atoms and suggest possible experiments to detect different phases in such systems.
The superfluid--Mott-insulator transition of spin-2 boson atoms with repulsive interaction in an optical lattice in a magnetic field is presented. By using the mean-field theory, the Mott ground states and phase diagrams of the superfluid--Mott-insulator transition at zero temperature are revealed. An applied magnetic field leads to splitting of some phase boundaries. For all the initial Mott ground states containing multiple spin components, different spin components take on different phase boundaries. It is found that in this system phase boundaries with different magnetization can be moved in different ways by changing only the intensity of the applied magnetic field.
We study the phase diagram of ultracold bosons in an optical lattice near a Feshbach resonance. Depending on the boson density, the strength of the optical-lattice potential and the detuning from resonance, the ground state can be a Mott insulator, a superfluid phase with both an atomic and a molecular condensate, or a superfluid phase with only a molecular condensate. Mott insulator to superfluid transitions can be induced either by decreasing the strength of the optical-lattice potential or by varying the detuning from the Feshbach resonance. Quite generally, we find that for a commensurate density the ground state may undergo several insulator-superfluid or superfluid-insulator transitions as the magnetic field is varied through the resonance.