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Manipulation of atom number distributions in lattice-confined spinor gases

Jared Austin, Zachary Shaw, Z. Chen, Khan W. Mahmud, Yingmei Liu

Published May 24, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We present an experimental study demonstrating the manipulation of atom number distributions of spinor gases after nonequilibrium quantum quenches across superfluid to Mott insulator phase transitions in cubic optical lattices. Our data indicate that atom distributions in individual Mott lobes can be tuned by properly designing quantum quench sequences, which suggest methods of maximizing the fraction of atoms in Mott lobes of even occupation numbers and have applications in attaining different quantum magnetic phases including massively entangled states. In addition, we find qualitative agreements between our experimental data and numerical simulations based on time-dependent Gutzwiller approximations in two-dimensional systems.

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We present an experimental study demonstrating the manipulation of atom number distributions of spinor gases after nonequilibrium quantum quenches across superfluid to Mott insulator phase transitions in cubic optical lattices. Our data indicate that atom distributions in individual Mott lobes can be tuned by properly designing quantum quench sequences, which suggest methods of maximizing the fraction of atoms in Mott lobes of even occupation numbers and have applications in attaining different quantum magnetic phases including massively entangled states. In addition, we find qualitative agreements between our experimental data and numerical simulations based on time-dependent Gutzwiller approximations in two-dimensional systems.
We present an experimental study demonstrating the manipulation of atom-number distributions of spinor gases after nonequilibrium quantum quenches across superfluid to Mott-insulator phase transitions in cubic optical lattices. Our data indicate that atom distributions in individual Mott lobes can be tuned by properly designing quantum quench sequences, which suggests methods of maximizing the fraction of atoms in Mott lobes of even occupation numbers and has applications in attaining different quantum magnetic phases including massively entangled states. Spatial distributions of gases in three-dimensional lattices are derived from the observed number distributions, which reveal complex spatial dynamics during the quantum quenches. Qualitative agreements are also found between our experimental data and numerical simulations based on time-dependent Gutzwiller approximations in two-dimensional systems.
We present an experimental study on nonequilibrium dynamics of a spinor condensate after it is quenched across a superfluid to Mott insulator (MI) phase transition in cubic lattices. Intricate dynamics consisting of spin-mixing oscillations at multiple frequencies are observed in time evolutions of the spinor condensate localized in deep lattices after the quantum quench. Similar spin dynamics also appear after spinor gases in the MI phase are suddenly moved away from their ground states via quenching magnetic fields. We confirm these observed spectra of spin-mixing dynamics can be utilized to reveal atom number distributions of an inhomogeneous system, and to study transitions from two-body to many-body dynamics. Our data also imply the nonequilibrium dynamics depend weakly on the quench speed but strongly on the lattice potential. This enables precise measurements of the spin-dependent interaction, a key parameter determining the spinor physics.
Quantum simulators are easily controllable quantum systems that allow us to physically model the behavior of more complex systems, that are intractable with even the most advanced supercomputers, to gain insight into their behavior. Using lattice confined spinor Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) as quantum simulators, we explore the quantum critical dynamics of the superfluid to Mott insulator phase transition in a three-dimensional cubic optical lattice. Our observations reveal that, in a quantum version of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, the dynamics can be frozen by a sufficiently quick ramp across the transition. Additionally, we utilize discrete energy signatures in nonequilibrium spin mixing dynamics generated by atoms that are tightly confined to single lattice sites after a quench across this transition to understand the spatial dynamics of a BEC during this transition. This "indirect microscopy" method is required to determine the spatial distribution because achieving single lattice site resolved imaging of three dimensional lattice confined quantum gases remains experimentally challenging even with advanced quantum gas microscopy methods. The observed number distributions additionally demonstrate that it may be possible to design lattice ramp sequences to manipulate the distribution of atoms to enhance desired effects.
Over recent years, exciting developments in the field of ultracold atoms confined in optical lattices have led to numerous theoretical proposals devoted to the quantum simulation of problems e.g. known from condensed matter physics. Many of those ideas demand experimental environments with non-cubic lattice geometries. In this paper, we report on the implementation of a versatile three-beam lattice allowing for the generation of triangular as well as hexagonal optical lattices. As an important step, the superfluid–Mott insulator (SF–MI) quantum phase transition has been observed and investigated in detail in this lattice geometry for the first time. In addition to this, we study the physics of spinor Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC) in the presence of the triangular optical lattice potential, especially spin changing dynamics across the SF–MI transition. Our results suggest that, below the SF–MI phase transition, a well-established mean-field model describes the observed data when renormalizing the spin-dependent interaction. Interestingly, this opens up new perspectives for a lattice-driven tuning of a spin dynamics resonance occurring through the interplay of the quadratic Zeeman effect and spin-dependent interaction. Finally, we discuss further lattice configurations that can be realized with our setup.
We analyze quantum phase transitions in a system of optical lattice bosons coupled to an array of atomic quantum dots. Atomic quantum dots are represented by hard-core bosons of different hyperfine species and therefore can be mapped onto pseudospins 1/2. The system parallels the Bose-Hubbard model with an additional assisted tunneling via coupling to the atomic quantum dots. We calculate the phase diagram of the combined system, numerically within the Gutzwiller ansatz and analytically using the mean-field decoupling approximation. The result of the assisted Bose-Hubbard model is that the Mott-superfluid transition still takes place; however, the Mott lobes strongly depend on the system parameters such as the detuning. One can even reverse the usual hierarchy of the lobes with the first lobe becoming the smallest. The phase transition in the bosonic subsystem is accompanied by a magnetization rotation in the pseudospin subsystem with the tilting angle being an effective order parameter. When direct tunneling is taken into account, the Mott lobes can be made to disappear and the bosonic subsystem becomes superfluid throughout.
We study quenches across the Bose-Hubbard Mott-insulator-to-superfluid quantum phase transition by using an ultracold atomic gas trapped in an optical lattice. Quenching from the Mott insulator to the superfluid phase is accomplished by continuously tuning the ratio of Hubbard tunneling to interaction energy. Excitations of the condensate formed after the quench are measured by using time-of-flight imaging. We observe that the degree of excitation is proportional to the fraction of atoms that cross the phase boundary and that the quantity of excitations and energy produced during the quench have a power-law dependence on the quench rate. These phenomena suggest an excitation process analogous to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for defect generation in nonequilibrium classical phase transitions.