Cold atoms in a rotating optical lattice

Rashi Sachdeva, Sonika Johri, Sankalpa Ghosh

Extended Bose-Hubbard models with nearest-neighbor interaction describe minimally the effect of long-range interaction on ultracold atoms in deep optical lattices. The rotation of such optical lattices subjects such neutral cold atoms to the effect of an artificial magnetic field. The modification of the phase boundaries of the density-wave and Mott-insulator phases due to this rotation are shown to be related to the edge spectrum of spinorial and scalar Harper equations. Corresponding profiles of the checkerboard vortex states with sublattice modulated superfluid order parameter near the density-wave phase boundary are calculated.

Wen-Xiang Guo, Wu-Ming Liu

W. Zwerger

V. W. Scarola, S. Das Sarma

We theoretically study the observable response of edge currents in two-dimensional cold atom optical lattices. As an example, we use Gutzwiller mean-field theory to relate persistent edge currents surrounding a Mott insulator in a slowly rotating trapped Bose-Hubbard system to time of flight measurements. We briefly discuss an application, the detection of the Chern number using edge currents of a topologically ordered optical lattice insulator.

Bhuvanesh Sundar, Kaden R. A. Hazzard

Fei Zhou, Gordon Walter Semenoff

In this Letter we study various spin correlated insulating states of F=2 cold atoms in optical lattices. We find that the effective spin exchange interaction due to virtual hopping contains an octopole coupling between two neighboring lattice sites. Depending on scattering lengths and numbers of particles per site the ground states are either rotationally invariant dimer or trimer Mott insulators or insulating states with various spin orders. Three spin-ordered insulating phases are ferromagnetic, cyclic, and nematic Mott insulators. We estimate the phase boundaries for states with different numbers of atoms per lattice site.