Quantum Phase Transition in a Cold Atomic Spin-Boson Mixture

Dmitry Solenov, Dmitry Mozyrsky

Serge Florens, D. Venturelli, R. Narayanan

Peter P. Orth, Ivan Stanić, Karyn Le Hur

Using cold bosonic atoms with two (hyperfine) ground states, we introduce a spin-boson mixture that allows one to implement the quantum Ising model in a tunable dissipative environment. The first specie lies in a deep optical lattice with tightly confining wells and forms a spin array; spin-up (spin-down) corresponds to occupation by one (no) atom at each site. The second specie forms a superfluid reservoir. Different species are coupled coherently via laser transitions and collisions. Whereas the laser coupling mimics a transverse field for the spins, the coupling to the reservoir sound modes induces a ferromagnetic (Ising) coupling as well as dissipation. This gives rise to an order-disorder quantum phase transition where the effect of dissipation can be studied in a controllable manner.

Pavel Cejnar, Jan Jolie

Dmitry Solenov, Dmitry Mozyrsky

We study the kinetics of the first order phase separation transition in boson-fermion cold-atom mixtures. At sufficiently low temperatures such a transition is driven by quantum fluctuations responsible for the formation of critical nuclei of a stable phase. Based on a microscopic description of interacting boson-fermion mixtures we derive an effective action for the critical droplet and obtain an asymptotic expression for the nucleation rate in the vicinity of the phase transition and near the spinodal instability of the mixed phase. We also discuss effects of dissipation which play a dominant role close to the transition point, and identify the regimes where quantum nucleation can be experimentally observed in cold-atom systems.

昌久 古賀, Akihisa Koga