At a quantum phase transition, one ground state evolves into a different one by passing through a quantum critical region with enhanced spatial and temporal fluctuations. A method to map the quantum critical region using the single, local quantity R, the ratio of compressibility to local number fluctuations is proposed. R can be calculated from in situ experiments and also enables thermometry and phase diagnosis (for example whether superfluid or Mott insulating). The definition of R can be generalized to inhomogeneous systems and provides a powerful tool for experimentally mapping the finite temperature phase diagram demonstrated here for the two‐dimensional Bose Hubbard model.
At a quantum phase transition, one ground state evolves into a different one by passing through a quantum critical region with enhanced spatial and temporal fluctuations. A method to map the quantum critical region using the single, local quantity R, the ratio of compressibility to local number fluctuations is proposed. R can be calculated from in situ experiments and also enables thermometry and phase diagnosis (for example whether superfluid or Mott insulating). The definition of R can be generalized to inhomogeneous systems and provides a powerful tool for experimentally mapping the finite temperature phase diagram demonstrated here for the two‐dimensional Bose Hubbard model.
We propose that the temperature dependence of a single quantity $R={\ensuremath{\kappa}}_{i}/\ensuremath{\delta}{n}_{i}^{2}$, the ratio of the local compressibility to the local number fluctuations, can be used to map out the finite temperature phase diagram, diagnose the critical region around a quantum phase transition, and identify critical points belonging to different universality classes. We test our proposal using state-of-the-art large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the two-dimensional Bose Hubbard model. Our results have implications for recently developed single-site imaging experiments.
Ultracold atomic gases may be the ultimate quantum simulator.These isolated systems have the lowest temperatures in the observable universe, and their properties and interactions can be precisely and accurately tuned across a full spectrum of behaviors, from few-body physics to highly-correlated many-body effects.The ability to impose potentials on and tune interactions within ultracold gases to mimic complex systems mean they could become a theorist's playground.One of their great strengths, however, is also one of the largest obstacles to this dream: isolation.This thesis touches on both of these themes.First, methods to characterize phases and quantum critical points, and to construct finite temperature phase diagrams using experimentally accessible observables in the Bose Hubbard model are discussed.Then, the transition from a weakly to a strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture in the continuum is analyzed using zero temperature numerical techniques.Real materials can be emulated by ultracold atomic gases loaded into optical lattice potentials.We discuss the characteristics of a single boson species trapped in an optical lattice (described by the Bose Hubbard model) and the hallmarks of the quantum critical region that separates the superfluid and the Mott insulator ground states.We propose a method to map the quantum critical region using the single, experimentally accessible, local quantity R, the ratio of compressibility to local number fluctuations.The procedure to map a phase diagram with R is easily generalized to inhomogeneous systems and generic many-body Hamiltonians.We illustrate it here using quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the 2D Bose Hubbard model.Secondly, we investigate the transition from a degenerate Fermi gas weakly coupled List of Tables Table Page 2.1 Techniques to Probe Atoms in Optical Lattices . . . . . .
Abstract Quantum coherence and phase transitions are studied in a finite one‐dimensional Bose–Hubbard model using exact diagonalization under thermal fluctuations, a Stark potential, and disorder. The condensate fraction, superfluid fraction, visibility, number fluctuations, and the ‐norm of coherence are computed to characterize the Mott insulator–superfluid transition. Although finite‐size effects prevent a sharp transition, ground‐state properties reveal signatures of quantum criticality. Thermal fluctuations can enhance coherence via tunneling, a Stark potential promotes localization, and disorder suppresses global superfluidity while preserving local coherence. These results highlight how disorder, tilt, and temperature reshape coherence and offer insights for quantum simulation and strongly correlated phases. For systems up to six sites with unit filling, a spectral analysis is also performed through the metric mean gap ratio (MGR). However, limited statistics due to the small system size and computational constraints prevent a complete characterization of quantum chaos, yielding only approximate signatures.
We perform large-scale quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations for strongly interacting bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice trap and confirm an excellent agreement with the benchmarking in situ density measurements by the Chicago group [N. Gemelke et al., Nature (London) 460, 995 (2009)]. We further present a general finite-temperature phase diagram for both the uniform and the trapped systems, demonstrating how the universal scaling properties near the superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition can be observed from the in situ density profile. The characteristic temperature to find such quantum criticality is estimated to be of the order of the single-particle bandwidth, which should be achievable in the present experiments. Finally, we examine the validity regime of the local fluctuation-dissipation theorem, which can be a used as a thermometry in the strongly interacting regime.
The Bose glass (BG) phase is the Griffiths region of the disordered Bose–Hubbard model (BHM), characterized by finite, quasi-superfluid clusters within a Mott insulating background. We propose to utilize this characterization to identify the complete zero-temperature phase diagram of the disordered BHM in d ⩾ 2 dimensions by analysing the geometric properties of what we call superfluid (SF) clusters, which are defined to be clusters of sites with non-integer expectation values for the local boson occupation number. The Mott insulator phase then is the region in the phase diagram where no SF clusters exist, and the SF phase the region where SF clusters percolate—the BG phase is inbetween: SF clusters exist, but do not percolate. This definition is particularly useful in the context of local mean field (LMF) or Gutzwiller–Ansatz calculations, where we show that an identification of the phases on the basis of global quantities such as the averaged SF order parameter and the compressibility is misleading. We apply the SF cluster analysis to the LMF ground states of the two-dimensional disordered BHM to produce its phase diagram and find (a) an excellent agreement with the phase diagram predicted on the basis of quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the commensurate density n = 1 and (b) large differences to stochastic mean field and other mean field predictions for fixed disorder strength. The relation of the percolation transition of the SF clusters with the onset of non-vanishing SF stiffness indicating the BG to SF transition is discussed.
We investigate the temperature-dependent behavior emerging in the vicinity of the superfluid (SF) to Mott insulator (MI) transition of interacting bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice, described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The equilibrium phase diagram at finite temperatures is computed by means of the cluster mean-field theory (CMF) where the effect of non-local correlations is analyzed systematically by finite-size scaling of the cluster size. The phase diagram exhibits a rich structure including a transition and a crossover of the SF and MI phases respectively to a normal fluid (NF) state at finite temperature. In order to characterize these phases, and the NF transition and crossover scales, we calculate, in addition to the condensate amplitude, the superfluid fraction, sound velocity and compressibility. The phase boundaries obtained by CMF with finite-size scaling agree quantitatively with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results as well as with experiments. The von Neumann entanglement entropy of a cluster exhibits critical enhancement near the SF-MI quantum critical point (QCP). We also discuss the behavior of the transition lines near this QCP at the particle-hole symmetric point located at the tip of a Mott lobe as well as away from particle-hole symmetry.