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Physical Review A

Simulation of the magnetoresistance of ultracold atomic Bose gases in bichromatic lattices

Joseph Towers, Sam Cormack, David A. W. Hutchinson

Published Oct 18, 2013• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of the two-dimensional ultracold Bose gas in the presence of disorder and bichromatic pseudodisorder in an optical lattice, to which we apply a synthetic magnetic field. We demonstrate that, in the ballistic-transport regime, this leads to positive magnetoresistance and that, in the diffusive and strong-localization regimes, can also lead to negative magnetoresistance. We propose experimental scenarios to observe these effects.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.043625

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We present a theoretical study of the two-dimensional ultracold Bose gas in the presence of disorder and bichromatic pseudodisorder in an optical lattice, to which we apply a synthetic magnetic field. We demonstrate that, in the ballistic-transport regime, this leads to positive magnetoresistance and that, in the diffusive and strong-localization regimes, can also lead to negative magnetoresistance. We propose experimental scenarios to observe these effects.
Anderson localization was first investigated in the context of electrons in solids. One of the successes was in explaining the puzzle of negative magneto-resistance - as early as the 1940s it had been observed that electron diffusion rates in some materials can increase with the application of a magnetic field. Anderson localization has now been demonstrated in ultra-cold atomic gases. We present a theoretical study of the two-dimensional ultra-cold Bose gas in the presence of disorder, to which we apply a synthetic magnetic field. We demonstrate that, in the ballistic transport regime this leads to positive magneto-resistance and that, in the diffusive and strong localization regimes, can also lead to negative magneto-resistance. We propose experimental scenarios to observe these effects.
We use numerical simulation to study ultracold, quantum degenerate, atomic gases. In the first part of the thesis we study the effects of disorder, introduced via a bichromatic optical lattice, in one and two dimensional systems. We employ the Aubry-Andr\'{e} model and use time-dependent numerical simulations to investigate the disorder dependent transition to strong localisation present in the model. Weak s-wave interactions are added to the model and we observe the interaction between localisation and interaction induced self-trapping. We then add a tilted lattice potential to the model. In the homogeneous model this induces Bloch oscillations. While one might expect that a strong enough force will break the strong localisation or self-trapping, within the bounds of the single-band model, the trapping effect of the Bloch oscillations reinforces both of the other effects leading to increased confinement, albeit lacking the clear single frequency oscillation signature of pure Bloch oscillations. Along with the two dimensional bichromatic optical lattice we add a term to the Hamiltonian equivalent to that of a uniform external magnetic field on charged particles. Since the experimental realisation of this model would employ neutral atoms, the magnetic field is synthetic, the equivalent effect being produced by an appropriate set of lasers and magnetic fields. We show that in the ballistic regime (weak bichromatic disorder) the system displays positive magnetoresistance. Conversely in the strong localisation regime the system exhibits negative magnetoresistance. In the latter part of the thesis we use density functional theory to calculate the ground-state density of a harmonically trapped dipolar Fermi gas. We then use these to calculate the lowest energy collective mode oscillation frequencies under the hydrodynamic approximation. We find that increasing the strength of the dipoles has the effect of increasing the mode frequencies. The increase saturates for large dipole strengths. We verify this analytically and show that such is due to the local nature of the two dimensional energy functional and not dependent on the specific equation of state. We employ an average density approximation to construct an energy functional for the inhomogeneous, 2D degenerate Fermi gas. The ground-state densities for a cylindrically symmetric harmonic trap are compared to the Kohn-Sham results, showing extremely good agreement in the tail region and good agreement with the exact ground-state energy. We then do the same for higher order polynomial traps and obtain improved agreement for higher degree.
An important new development in the field of ultracold atomic gases is the study of the properties of these gases in a so-called optical lattice. An optical lattice is a periodic trapping potential for the atoms that is formed by the interference pattern of a few laser beams. A reason for the interest in these systems is that the effects of the interatomic interactions can be strongly enhanced. More specifically, it has been shown in a beautiful experiment by Greiner et al. in 2002 that by loading a Bose-Einstein condensate into an optical lattice it is possible for the system to undergo a quantum phase transition to a new quantum phase of matter, the so-called Mott insulator phase. Within this Mott insulator phase each lattice site is occupied by exactly one atom. This makes the Mott insulator phase especially well suited for applications in the field of quantum computation and quantum information processing. We have theoretically investigated the above mentioned quantum phase transition and our formalism allows for a description of the Mott insulator phase at nonzero temperatures. Another important experimental development in the field of ultracold atomic gases is the use of Feshbach resonances to control the interatomic interactions. Such a resonance occurs whenever two colliding atoms form a long-lived molecule for some time. The crucial point of a Feshbach resonance is that the above mentioned molecule has a magnetic moment that is not equal to twice the magnetic moment of the atom. As a consequence the energy difference between the two atoms and the molecule and hence the interactions between the atoms can be controlled by using an external magnetic field. By combining these two techniques, i.e, by trapping ultracold atomic gases in an optical lattice and by tuning a magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance there can be a new quantum phase transition between two superfluid phases. We gave derived the the theory for the description of these Feshbach resonances in optical lattices and applied it to various systems. To be a bit more precise, if we tune the external magnetic field such that the energy difference between a molecule and two atoms is sufficiently negative, then the gas consists of a Bose-Einstein condensate of molecules. In contrast, if the energy difference is large enough and positive we have a gas that consists primarily of a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms. It turns out that these two limits are separated by an Ising-like quantum phase transition. By using atomic Bose gases near a Feshbach resonance detailed experimental studies which test the theoretical predictions of the statistical and dynamical properties of these quantum phase transitions can be made.
The transport of quantum particles in non ideal material media (eg the conduction of electrons in an imperfect crystal) is strongly affected by scattering from impurities of the medium. Even for a weak disorder, semi-classical theories, such as those based on the Boltzmann equation for matter-waves scattering from the impurities, often fail to describe transport properties and full quantum approaches are necessary. The properties of the quantum systems are of fundamental interest as they show intriguing and non-intuitive phenomena that are not yet fully understood such as Anderson localization, percolation, disorder-driven quantum phase transitions and the corresponding Bose-glass or spin-glass phases. Understanding quantum transport in amorphous solids is one of the main issues in this context, related to electric and thermal conductivities. Ultracold atomic gases can now be considered to revisit the problem of quantum conductivity and quantum transport under unique control possibilities. Dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and degenerate Fermi gases (DFG) are produced routinely taking advantage of the recent progress in cooling and trapping of neutral atoms. Transport has been widely investigated in controlled potentials with no defects, for instance periodic potentials (optical lattices). Controlled disordered potentials can also be produced with various techniques such as the use of magnetic traps designed on atomic chips with rough wires, the use of localized impurity atoms, the use of radio-frequency fields or the use of optical potentials. This recently lead to the observation of the Anderson Localisation of a BEC and the measurement of the diffusion coefficient of a 2D gaz in the presence of disorder.
In this thesis we address relevant problems of the physics of quantum disordered systems from a numerical and theoretical point of view, with specific attention to the connection of our findings with ultracold atomic gases experiments. We concentrate on two main issues: the interplay between localization and interaction in disordered systems and the problem of localization in correlated random potentials. The first problem is investigated considering the expansion of a weakly interacting Bose gas in a bichromtic optical lattice. We observe that interaction has a destructive effect on the disorder-induced localization and leads to a subdiffusive expansion of the atomic gas. By comparing three characteristic energy scales of the system one can identify three different spreading regimes: weak chaos, strong chaos and self-trapping. The spreading behaviour in these regimes is predicted theoretically and verified numerically. We also interpreted existing experimental data on the basis of our findings and showed that there is a qualitative agreement between our numerical simulations and experiments. The second problem is investigated proposing a new model of correlated disorder that can be implemented experimentally using ultracold dipolar gases. We show that this model is characterized by the presence of both short and long range correlations. We study the localization properties of the model and highlight the role played by short and long range correlations in the determination of those properties. In particular we show that when short-range correlations are dominant, extended states can appear in the spectrum. The effect of long-range correlations is instead to restore localization over the whole spectrum and lead to counterintuitive behaviours of the localization length. More precisely, depending on the localization regime they can enhance or reduce the localization length at the centre of the band.
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices can be used to model condensed matter systems. They provide a clean, tuneable system which can be engineered to reach parameter regimes that are not accessible in condensed matter systems. Furthermore, they provide different techniques for probing the properties of these systems.This thesis presents an experimental and theoretical study of ultracold atoms in optical lattices for quantum simulation of two-dimensional systems.The first part of this thesis describes an experiment with a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb loaded into a two-dimensional optical lattice. The beams that generate the optical lattice are controlled by acousto-optic deflection to provide a flexible optical lattice potential. The use of a dynamic ‘accordion’ lattice with ultracold atoms, where the spacing of the lattice is increased in both directions from 2.2 to 5.5 μm, is described. This technique allows an experiment such as quantum simulations to be performed with a lattice spacing smaller than the resolution limit of the imaging system, while allowing imaging of the atoms at individual lattice sites by subsequent expansion of the optical lattice. The optical lattice can also be rotated, generating an artificial magnetic field. Previous experiments with the rotating optical lattice are summarised, and steps to reaching the strongly correlated regime are discussed.The second part of this thesis details numerical techniques that can be used to describe strongly correlated two-dimensional systems. These systems are challenging to simulate numerically, as the exponential growth in the size of the Hilbert space with the number of particles means that they can only be solved exactly for very small systems. Recently proposed correlator product states [Phys. Rev. B 80, 245116 (2009)] provide a numerically efficient description which can be used to simulate large two-dimensional systems. In this thesis we apply this method to the two-dimensional quantum Ising model, and the Bose-Hubbard model subject to an artificial magnetic field in the regime where fractional quantum Hall states are predicted to occur.