On the collective electronic state in a system of strongly excited atoms

G. V. Gadiyak, D.A. Kirzhnits, Yu. E. Lozovik

Tommaso Mazza, Antonia Karamatskou, Markus Ilchen +8 more

Collective behaviour is a characteristic feature in many-body systems, important for developments in fields such as magnetism, superconductivity, photonics and electronics. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the optically nonlinear response of collective excitations. Here we demonstrate how the nonlinear interaction of a many-body system with intense XUV radiation can be used as an effective probe for characterizing otherwise unresolved features of its collective response. Resonant photoionization of atomic xenon was chosen as a case study. The excellent agreement between experiment and theory strongly supports the prediction that two distinct poles underlie the giant dipole resonance. Our results pave the way towards a deeper understanding of collective behaviour in atoms, molecules and solid-state systems using nonlinear spectroscopic techniques enabled by modern short-wavelength light sources.

B. Vaucher, S. J. Thwaite, Dieter Jaksch

We investigate the dynamics of Rydberg electrons excited from the ground state of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. We first consider a lattice comprising an array of double-well potentials, where each double well is occupied by two ultracold atoms. We demonstrate the existence of molecular states with equilibrium distances of the order of experimentally attainable interwell spacings and binding energies of the order of ${10}^{3}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{GHz}$. We also consider the situation whereby ground-state atoms trapped in an optical lattice are collectively excited to Rydberg levels, such that the charge-density distributions of neighboring atoms overlap. We compute the hopping rate and interaction matrix elements between highly excited electrons separated by distances comparable to typical lattice spacings. Such systems have tunable interaction parameters and a temperature $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{4}$ times smaller than the Fermi temperature, making them potentially attractive for the study and simulation of strongly correlated electronic systems.

G. V. Gadiyak, D. A. Kirzhnits, Yu. E. Lozovik

Norikazu Tomita, Keiichirō Nasu

We develop a path-integral formulation which is free from Grassmann algebras to calculate absorption spectra of strongly correlated electron systems. The Coulomb repulsions, including not only the short-range part but also a long-range part, are reduced into a time-dependent one-body Hamiltonian with only two kinds of Ising spin variables per site. The sums over these spin configurations are performed according to the quantum Monte Carlo techniques. By this method we disclose the electron correlation effects on absorption spectra. The method is applied to the one-dimensional half-filled electron systems, where the ground state is an insulating state due to the strong long-range Coulomb repulsion and contains large quantum fluctuations by low-energy collective spin excitations. The absorption spectrum shows an infrared divergencelike structure, which seems to arise from the simultaneous excitation of the charge-transfer exciton and collective spin excitations. The spectrum also contains new peaks on the high energy side which correspond to the multiple excitation of electron-hole pairs. Such a multiple excitation is caused by the electron correlation effect, through which the photogenerated electron and hole can excite other electron-hole pairs. Our result clearly shows that charge and spin of the electron are inseparable in a many-body system in an insulating state caused by the strong long-range Coulomb repulsion.

F. J. Kok