This chapter examines ultracold dipolar gases. First, it discusses the general properties of dipole–dipole interaction and explains how ultracold dipolar systems can be realized in experiments. The chapter reviews the properties of ultracold trapped dipolar Bose gases, pointing out the appearance of the roton minimum in the excitation spectrum. It then moves on to dipolar gases in a lattice, and investigates the corresponding extended Hubbard models. Dipolar bosons in a 2D optical lattice are discussed within the Gutzwiller approximation in more detail, with an emphasis on the appearance of multiple metastable states. Next, the chapter considers quantum Monte Carlo studies of dipolar gases, and discusses some further dipolar effects, which can be realized with cold atoms.
This chapter examines ultracold dipolar gases. First, it discusses the general properties of dipole–dipole interaction and explains how ultracold dipolar systems can be realized in experiments. The chapter reviews the properties of ultracold trapped dipolar Bose gases, pointing out the appearance of the roton minimum in the excitation spectrum. It then moves on to dipolar gases in a lattice, and investigates the corresponding extended Hubbard models. Dipolar bosons in a 2D optical lattice are discussed within the Gutzwiller approximation in more detail, with an emphasis on the appearance of multiple metastable states. Next, the chapter considers quantum Monte Carlo studies of dipolar gases, and discusses some further dipolar effects, which can be realized with cold atoms.
This tutorial is a theoretical work, in which we study the physics of ultra-cold dipolar bosonic gases in optical lattices. Such gases consist of bosonic atoms or molecules that interact via dipolar forces, and that are cooled below the quantum degeneracy temperature, typically in the nK range. When such a degenerate quantum gas is loaded into an optical lattice produced by standing waves of laser light, new kinds of physical phenomena occur. These systems realize then extended Hubbard-type models, and can be brought to a strongly correlated regime. The physical properties of such gases, dominated by the long-range, anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, are discussed using the mean-field approximations, and exact Quantum Monte Carlo techniques (the Worm algorithm).
This thesis contains a study of ultracold paramagnetic atoms or polar molecules characterized by a long-range anisotropic dipolar interaction. We particularly focus on two aspects of ultracold dipolar gases. In the first problem the ground state properties of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are investigated. This problem has gained importance due to recent experimental advances in achieving a condensate of Chromium atoms and ongoing research to produce quantum degenerate polar molecules. In the second problem, we consider possible applications of ultracold polar molecules to rotation sensing and interferometry. First, we concentrate on the interplay between the trapping geometry and dipole-dipole interaction for a polarized dipolar bosonic condensate. As the dipole-dipole interaction is attractive along the polarized direction, the lowest energy state of the BEC is always a collapsed state. However by applying a trapping potential along the polarization direction it is possible to achieve a metastable dipolar BEC. By numerically solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we show that below a critical interaction strength, a metastable state exists depending on the trapping geometry. We also show that a novel feature of dipolar BEC is the appearance of different structural metastable ground states for certain combinations of trapping geometry and particle number. Next, by mixing in single component fermions we show that dipolar BEC can be stabilized against collapse in pancake shaped or cylindrical traps. We also show that the excitation spectrum of the BEC may have a minimum for non-zero momentum, termed a “roton minimum”. This minimum leads to a transition to stable or metastable density-wave states depending on the density of the bosons and boson-fermion interaction strength. In the second problem, we study a proposal for a large-angle coherent beam splitter for polar molecules. By taking into account the effect of a quasi-static external electric field on the rotational levels of the polarized molecules we show that it is possible to coherently split a stationary cloud of molecules into two counter-propagating components. We then investigate the effect of longitudinal acceleration on the transverse motion of the particles, assuming that the longitudinal motion of the molecules can be approximated classically by a wave packet with some mean velocity while the transverse motion is governed by quantum mechanics. We propose a particular time-dependent shape of acceleration to minimize the excitations in the transverse motion. Our theory is also applicable to the general case of particles moving along a circular guide with time-dependent longitudinal velocity. In addition, we include the effects of velocity fluctuations due to noise in the accelerating field.
We present a concise review of the physics of ultra-cold dipolar gases, based mainly on the theoretical developments in our own group. First, we discuss shortly weakly interacting ultra-cold trapped dipolar gases. Dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates exhibit non-standard instabilities and the physics of both Bose and Fermi dipolar gases depends on the trap geometry. We focus then the second part of the paper on strongly correlated dipolar gases and discuss ultra-cold dipolar gases in optical lattices. Such gases exhibit a spectacular richness of quantum phases and metastable states, which may perhaps be used as quantum memories. We comment shortly on the possibility of superchemistry aiming at the creation of dipolar heteronuclear molecules in lattices. Finally, we turn to ultra-cold dipolar gases in artificial magnetic fields, and consider rotating dipolar gases, that provide in our opinion the best option towards the realization of the fractional quantum Hall effect and quantum Wigner crystals.
We present a review of recent results concerning the physics of ultracold trapped dipolar gases. In particular, we discuss the Bose-Einstein condensation for dipolar Bose gases and the BCS transition for dipolar Fermi gases. In both cases we stress the dominant role of the trap geometry in determining the properties of the system. We present also results concerning bosonic dipolar gases in optical lattices and the possibility of obtaining a variety of different quantum phases in such a case. Finally, we analyze various possible routes towards achieving ultracold dipolar gases.
Ultracold dilute atomic gases are highly controllable systems whose properties are fundamentally determined by the interatomic interactions.In typical experiments on ultra cold gases particles interact dominantly via a short-range isotropic potential.However, during the last years a new generation of experiments is starting to explore systems, where an additional interaction, the long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction plays a significant or possibly dominant role.The effects induced by the anisotropy of the dipole-dipole interaction are crucially enhanced if the dipolar gas is confined in a deep optical lattice.In this thesis we study novel phenomena in such systems of dipolar gases in deep optical lattices.The nonlocal nonlinearity introduced by the dipole-dipole interaction plays a crucial role in the physics of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates.In particular, it may distort significantly the stability of straight vortex lines.Remarkably, in the presence of a periodic potential along the vortex line, the spectrum of transverse modes shows a roton-like minimum, which eventually destabilizes the straight vortex when the BEC as a whole is still stable, opening the possibility for new scenarios for vortex line configurations in dipolar gases.We have analyzed this instability, and showed that it leads to a second-order-like phase transition from a straight vortex line into novel helical or snake-like configurations, depending on the dipole orientation.Strong 1D lattices usually lead to unconnected two-dimensional gases.The long-range character of the dipole-dipole interactions leads to a novel scenario where non-overlapping gases at different sites may interact significantly.We show that the excitations of non-overlapping condensates in 1D optical lattices acquire a band-like character, being collectively shared by different sites.In particular, the hybridization of the modes significantly enhances the rotonization of the excitations, and may induce roton-instability.We discuss the observability of this effect in on-going experiments.Fermionic polar molecules in deep 1D optical lattices may form selfassembled filaments when the electric dipoles are oriented along the lattice axis.These composites are bosons or fermions depending on the number of molecules per chain, leading to a peculiar and complex Bose-Fermi mixture, vi which we discuss in detail for the simplest case of a three-well potential.We show that the interplay between filament binding energy, transverse filament modes, and trimer Fermi energy leads to a rich variety of possible scenarios ranging from a degenerate Fermi gas of trimers to a binary mixture of two different types of bosonic dimers.We study the intriguing zero temperature and finite temperature physics of these composites for the particular case of an ideal filament gas loaded in 1D sites, and discuss possible methods to probe these chain mixtures.
This chapter focuses on ultracold gases of atoms that possess internal spin structure. First, it considers spinor interactions, and then turns to trapped spinor Bose–Einstein condensates. In particular, the chapter discusses various possible mean field phases, spin textures, and topological defects. Next, it describes bosonic spinor gases in optical lattices, effective Hamiltonians, and possible quantum phases. Finally, spinor Fermi gases in optical lattices for spins larger than ½ are discussed.