Interacting bosons and fermions in three-dimensional optical lattice potentials : from atom optics to quantum simulation

Sebastian Will, Thorsten Best, Simon G. Braun +3 more

Dirk-Sören Lühmann, Kai Bongs, K. Sengstock +1 more

We theoretically investigate the enhanced localization of bosonic atoms by fermionic atoms in three-dimensional optical lattices and find a self-trapping of the bosons for attractive boson-fermion interaction. Because of this mutual interaction, the fermion orbitals are substantially squeezed, which results in a strong deformation of the effective potential for bosons. This effect is enhanced by an increasing bosonic filling factor leading to a large shift of the transition between the superfluid and the Mott-insulator phase. We find a nonlinear dependency of the critical potential depth on the boson-fermion interaction strength. The results, in general, demonstrate the important role of higher Bloch bands for the physics of attractively interacting quantum gas mixtures in optical lattices and are of direct relevance to recent experiments with 87Rb-40K mixtures, where a large shift of the critical point has been found.

Takehiko Mori, S Ikeda

One-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture systems in a random potential are numerically investigated with focus on their superfluidity and localization properties. It is known that one-dimensional bosons and fermions behave differently in a weak random potential: Interacting bosons in a weak random potential exhibit superfluidity if the interactions are repulsive and not too strong, while interacting fermions with repulsive forces are localized in the presence of randomness. So the question is what happens if weakly interacting bosons and fermions are mixed in a random potential, which might be actually realized by the technique of trapping atoms on a random optical lattice. To answer this question we performed quantum Monte Carlo simulations of bosons and fermions on a one-dimensional lattice with random site energies. The result showed that when the boson-fermion interactions were attractive, both bosons and fermions tended to be localized. However when the boson- fermion interactions were repulsive and relatively weak, the superfluidity of bosons was enhanced and the fermions were delocalized.

Sebastian Will

Sergey Grishkevich, Simon Sala, Alejandro Sáenz

A theoretical approach is described for an exact numerical treatment of a pair of ultracold atoms interacting via a central potential and that are trapped in a finite three-dimensional optical lattice. The coupling of center-of-mass and relative-motion coordinates is treated using an exact diagonalization (configuration-interaction) approach. The orthorhombic symmetry of an optical lattice with three different but orthogonal lattice vectors is explicitly considered as is the fermionic or bosonic symmetry in the case of indistinguishable particles.

Sebastian Will