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Observation of metastability in an open quantum system with long-range interactions

Lorenz Hruby, Nishant Dogra, Manuele Landini, Tobias Donner, Tilman Esslinger

Published Aug 7, 2017• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

We experimentally study the stability of a bosonic Mott-insulator against the formation of a density wave induced by long-range interactions, and characterize the intrinsic dynamics between these two states. The Mott-insulator is created in a quantum degenerate gas of 87-Rubidium atoms, trapped in a three-dimensional optical lattice. The gas is located inside and globally coupled to an optical cavity. This causes interactions of global range, mediated by photons dispersively scattered between a transverse lattice and the cavity. The scattering comes with an atomic density modulation, which is measured by the photon flux leaking from the cavity. We initialize the system in a Mott-insulating state and then rapidly increase the global coupling strength. We observe that the system falls into either of two distinct final states. One is characterized by a low photon flux, signaling a Mott insulator, and the other is characterized by a high photon flux, which we associate with a density wave. Ramping the global coupling slowly, we observe a hysteresis loop between the two states - a further signature of metastability. A comparison with a theoretical model confirms that the metastability originates in the competition between short- and global-range interactions. From the increasing photon flux monitored during the switching process, we find that several thousand atoms tunnel to a neighboring site on the time scale of the single particle dynamics. We argue that a density modulation, initially forming in the compressible surface of the trapped gas, triggers an avalanche tunneling process in the Mott-insulating region.

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We experimentally study the stability of a bosonic Mott-insulator against the formation of a density wave induced by long-range interactions, and characterize the intrinsic dynamics between these two states. The Mott-insulator is created in a quantum degenerate gas of 87-Rubidium atoms, trapped in a three-dimensional optical lattice. The gas is located inside and globally coupled to an optical cavity. This causes interactions of global range, mediated by photons dispersively scattered between a transverse lattice and the cavity. The scattering comes with an atomic density modulation, which is measured by the photon flux leaking from the cavity. We initialize the system in a Mott-insulating state and then rapidly increase the global coupling strength. We observe that the system falls into either of two distinct final states. One is characterized by a low photon flux, signaling a Mott insulator, and the other is characterized by a high photon flux, which we associate with a density wave. Ramping the global coupling slowly, we observe a hysteresis loop between the two states - a further signature of metastability. A comparison with a theoretical model confirms that the metastability originates in the competition between short- and global-range interactions. From the increasing photon flux monitored during the switching process, we find that several thousand atoms tunnel to a neighboring site on the time scale of the single particle dynamics. We argue that a density modulation, initially forming in the compressible surface of the trapped gas, triggers an avalanche tunneling process in the Mott-insulating region.
We experimentally study the stability of a bosonic Mott insulator against the formation of a density wave induced by long-range interactions and characterize the intrinsic dynamics between these two states. The Mott insulator is created in a quantum degenerate gas of 87-Rubidium atoms, trapped in a 3D optical lattice. The gas is located inside and globally coupled to an optical cavity. This causes interactions of global range, mediated by photons dispersively scattered between a transverse lattice and the cavity. The scattering comes with an atomic density modulation, which is measured by the photon flux leaking from the cavity. We initialize the system in a Mott-insulating state and then rapidly increase the global coupling strength. We observe that the system falls into either of two distinct final states. One is characterized by a low photon flux, signaling a Mott insulator, and the other is characterized by a high photon flux, which we associate with a density wave. Ramping the global coupling slowly, we observe a hysteresis loop between the two states-a further signature of metastability. A comparison with a theoretical model confirms that the metastability originates in the competition between short- and global-range interactions. From the increasing photon flux monitored during the switching process, we find that several thousand atoms tunnel to a neighboring site on the timescale of the single-particle dynamics. We argue that a density modulation, initially forming in the compressible surface of the trapped gas, triggers an avalanche tunneling process in the Mott-insulating region.
A high-finesse optical cavity allows the establishment of long-range interactions between bosons in an optical lattice when most cold-atom experiments are restricted to short-range interactions. Supersolid phases have recently been experimentally observed in such systems. Using both exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations and the Gutzwiller approximation, we study the ground-state phase diagrams of a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions which describes such experiments. In addition to superfluid and insulating Mott phases, the infinite-range checkerboard interactions introduce charge-density waves and supersolid phases. We study here the system at various particle densities, elucidate the nature of the phases and quantum phase transitions, and discuss the stability of the phases with respect to phase separation. In particular we confirm the existence and stability of a supersolid phase detected experimentally.
We investigate the dynamics of Mott-insulating regions of a trapped bosonic gas as the interaction strength is changed linearly with time. The bosonic gas considered is loaded into an optical lattice and confined to a parabolic trapping potential. Two situations are addressed: the formation of Mott domains in a superfluid gas as the interaction is increased and their melting as the interaction strength is lowered. In the first case, depending on the local filling, Mott-insulating barriers can develop and hinder the density and energy transport throughout the system. In the second case, the density and local energy adjust rapidly, whereas long-range correlations require a longer time to settle. For both cases, we consider the time evolution of various observables: the local density and energy and their respective currents, the local compressibility, the local excess energy, the heat, and single-particle correlators. The evolution of these observables is obtained using the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization-group technique and comparisons with time evolutions done within the Gutzwiller approximation are provided.
We prepare and study a metastable attractive Mott-insulator state formed with bosonic atoms in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Starting from a Mott insulator with Cs atoms at weak repulsive interactions, we use a magnetic Feshbach resonance to tune the interactions to large attractive values and produce a metastable state pinned by attractive interactions with a lifetime on the order of 10 s. We probe the (de)excitation spectrum via lattice modulation spectroscopy, measuring the interaction dependence of two- and three-body bound-state energies. As a result of increased on-site three-body loss we observe resonance broadening and suppression of tunneling processes that produce three-body occupation.
A system of neutral atoms trapped in an optical lattice and dispersively coupled to the field of an optical cavity can realize a variation of the Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions. This model exhibits a first-order quantum phase transition between a Mott insulator and a charge density wave, with spontaneous symmetry breaking between even and odd sites, as was recently observed experimentally [Landig et al., Nature (London) 532, 476 (2016)]. In the present paper, we approach the analysis of this transition using a variational model which allows us to establish the notion of an energy barrier separating the two phases. Using a discrete WKB method, we then show that the local tunneling of atoms between adjacent sites lowers this energy barrier and hence facilitates the transition. Within our simplified description, we are thus able to augment the phase diagram of the model with information concerning the height of the barrier separating the metastable minima from the global minimum in each phase, which is an essential aspect for the understanding of the reconfiguration dynamics induced by a quench across a quantum critical point.
We discuss a technique to probe the properties of an interacting cold atomic gas that can be viewed as a dynamical compressibility measurement. We apply this technique to the study of the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator quantum phase transition in one and three dimensions for a bosonic gas trapped in an optical lattice. Excitations of the system are detected by time-of-flight measurements. The experimental data for the one-dimensional case are in good agreement with the results of a time-dependent density-matrix-renormalization-group calculation.