Physicists have been trying to create artificial magnetic systems using ultra-cold atomic gases as their simulators. However, behavior of many ultra-cold atomic systems is not very well understood yet. Ultra-cold fermionic alkaline earth atomic (AEA) gases are one of those systems. In this thesis, we study the effects of thermal fluctuations on the overall macroscopic behavior of ultra-cold fermionic AEA gases using a particular semiclassical model. We study the AEA systems on a square lattice with periodic boundary conditions. To investigate the behavior of AEA systems under the effects of thermal fluctuations, we analyze several different types of correlation functions, which correspond to different physical observables. We analyze the correlation functions using the results obtained from Monte Carlo simulations. We show that for the cases studied, all the correlation functions approach zero as the system size goes to infinity at any temperature, indicating that no phase transition occurs as a consequence of thermal fluctuations.
Ultracold fermionic alkaline earth atoms confined in optical lattices realize Hubbard models with internal SU(N) symmetries, where N can be as large as ten. Such systems are expected to harbor exotic magnetic physics at temperatures below the superexchange energy scale. Employing quantum Monte Carlo simulations to access the low-temperature regime of one-dimensional chains, we show that after adiabatically loading a weakly interacting gas into the strongly interacting regime of an optical lattice, the final temperature decreases with increasing N. Furthermore, we estimate the temperature scale required to probe correlations associated with low-temperature SU(N) magnetism. Our findings are encouraging for the exploration of exotic large-N magnetic states in ongoing experiments.
Abstract Symmetries play a crucial role in understanding phases of matter and the transitions between them. Theoretical investigations of quantum models with SU( N ) symmetry have provided important insights into many-body phenomena. However, these models have generally remained a theoretical idealization, since it is very difficult to exactly realize the SU( N ) symmetry in conventional quantum materials for large N . Intriguingly however, in recent years, ultracold alkaline-earth-atom (AEA) quantum simulators have paved the path to realize SU( N )-symmetric many-body models, where N is tunable and can be as large as 10. This symmetry emerges due to the closed shell structure of AEAs, thereby leading to a perfect decoupling of the electronic degrees of freedom from the nuclear spin. In this work, we provide a systematic review of recent theoretical and experimental work on the many-body physics of these systems. We first discuss the thermodynamic properties and collective modes of trapped Fermi gases, highlighting the enhanced interaction effects that appear as N increases. We then discuss the properties of the SU( N ) Fermi–Hubbard model, focusing on some of the major experimental achievements in this area. We conclude with a compendium highlighting some of the significant theoretical progress on SU( N ) lattice models and a discussion of some exciting directions for future research.
We study Mott insulators of fermionic alkaline earth atoms, described by Heisenberg spin models with enhanced SU(N) symmetry. In dramatic contrast to SU(2) magnetism, more than two spins are required to form a singlet. On the square lattice, the classical ground state is highly degenerate and magnetic order is thus unlikely. In a large-N limit, we find a chiral spin liquid ground state with topological order and Abelian fractional statistics. We discuss its experimental detection. Chiral spin liquids with non-Abelian anyons may also be realizable with alkaline earth atoms.
We numerically study the quantum magnetism of ultracold alkali and alkaline-earth fermion systems with large hyperfine spin
F=23, which are characterized by a generic
Sp(N) symmetry with
N=4. The methods of exact diagonalization (ED) and density matrix renormalization group are employed for the large size one-dimensional (1D) systems, and the ED method is applied to a two-dimensional (2D) square lattice on small sizes. We focus on the magnetic exchange models in the Mott-insulating state at quarter-filling. Both 1D and 2D systems exhibit rich phase diagrams depending on the ratio between the spin exchanges
J0 and
J2 in the bond spin singlet and quintet channels, respectively. In one dimension, the ground states exhibit a long-range-ordered dimerization with a finite spin gap at
J0/J2>1 and a gapless spin-liquid state at ${J}_{0}/{J}_{2}\ensuremath{\leqslant}1$, respectively. In the former and latter cases, the correlation functions exhibit the two-site and four-site periodicities, respectively. In two-dimensions, various spin-correlation functions are calculated up to the size of $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}4$. The N\'eel-type spin correlation dominates at large values of
J0/J2, while a $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}2$ plaquette correlation is prominent at small values of this ratio. Between them, a columnar spin-Peierls dimerization correlation peaks. We infer the competition among the plaquette ordering, the dimer ordering, and the N\'eel ordering in the 2D system.
We study finite-temperature properties of ultracold four-component mixtures of alkaline-earth-metal-like atoms in optical lattices that can be effectively described by the two-band spin-
1/2 Hubbard model including Hund's exchange coupling term. Our main goal is to investigate the effect of exchange interactions on finite-temperature magnetic phases for a wide range of lattice fillings. We use the dynamical mean-field theory approach and its real-space generalization to obtain finite-temperature phase diagrams including transitions to magnetically ordered phases. It allows to determine optimal experimental regimes for approaching long-range ferromagnetic ordering in ultracold gases. We also calculate the entropy in the vicinity of magnetically ordered phases, which provides quantitative predictions for ongoing and future experiments aiming at approaching and studying long-range ordered states in optical lattices.
This thesis presents a set of studies on atomic systems where quantum effects are particularly relevant. These studies have been developed by applying a variety of tools from many-body physics. First of all, we have studied the prospects for the existence of a superfluid transition in an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms, by generalizing the BCS theory of superconductivity to the case when the two species that pair have different densities and the ground state may spontaneously break one or more symmetries. In a second part, we have studied the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate whose spin degree of freedom is free to evolve inside a quasi-onedimensional optical trap. We have used a mean-field formulation to address both the zero temperature case and the finite temperature one. Finally, we have performed a careful study of the ground state and the line tension of two-dimensional systems of helium-4. First, we have used Monte Carlo techniques, then with a Density Functional built on-purpose. Comments are welcome! KEYWORDS: Cold gases, Pairing, Spinor condensate, Helium, Two dimensions