Novel few- and many-body lattice methods for cold atoms

Lucas Platter

H.‐W. Hammer

Nikolay Prokofiev

Yinyin Qian, Ming Gong, Chuanwei Zhang

Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an ideal platform for exploring many-body physics of a large system arising from the coupling among a series of small identical systems whose few-body dynamics is exactly solvable. Using Landau-Zener (LZ) transition of bosonic atoms in double-well optical lattices as an experimentally realizable model, we investigate such few- to many-body routes by exploring the relation and difference between the small few-body (in one double well) and the large many-body (in double-well lattice) nonequilibrium dynamics of cold atoms in optical lattices. We find the many-body coupling between double wells greatly enhances the LZ transition probability. The many-body dynamics in the double-well lattice shares both similarity and difference from the few-body dynamics in one and two double wells. The sign of the on-site interaction plays a significant role in the many-body LZ transition. Various experimental signatures of the many-body LZ transition, including atom density, momentum distribution, and density-density correlation, are obtained.

Magnus O. Borgh

This dissertation investigates properties of two-dimensional many-body systems. Studies are performed using the Spin-Density Functional Theory with the Local Spin-Density Approximation, and numerical exact diagonalization. The properties studied include symmetry-breaking states in few-electron quantum dots, gaps in confined few-body systems, magnetic properties of cold fermionic atoms in optical lattices, and vortex formation in few-body systems. The dissertation also studies the properties of the SDFT-LSDA method for many-body calculations itself. The dissertation comprises five original papers, which are presented following an introduction to the fields of research, and the methods used, and the systems studied. Paper I investigates symmetry-breaking states in quantum dots, and the reliability of SDFT-LSDA for such systems. It is found that SDFT-LSDA may introduce artificial energy splittings between the members of a degenerate spin multiplet in the ground state. Paper II investigates the reliability of SDFT-LSDA when used to calculate gaps, and addition and removal energies in few-body systems. It is found that, contrary to studies of atoms and bilk solids, Kohn-Sham eigenvalues can be used to calculate addition and removal energies in parabolically confined systems. Also, in Paper II, van der Waals blockade is predicted to occur in systems of cold atoms, in analogy to Coulomb blockade in electronic systems. In Papers III and IV, mean-field theory is used to study the magnetic properties of cold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice. The results are compared with a similar study for quantum-dot lattices. It is found that there is a rich magnetic phase diagram, with non-magnetic, ferromagnetic, and anti-ferromagnetic states. The phase diagram of the optical lattice is found to be very similar to the phase diagram of the quantum-dot lattice. Paper V uses exact diagonalization to study vortex formation in rotating few-body quantum systems. Systems consisting of Coulomb-interacting fermions (electrons), Coulomb-interacting bosons, and bosons with a short-range interaction are studied. It is found that vortex formation in these systems has universal properties.

Matthew Wingate A