We propose and discuss methods for detecting quasimolecular complexes which are expected to form in strongly interacting optical lattice systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the detection of composite fermions forming in Bose-Fermi mixtures. We argue that, as an indirect indication of the composite fermions and a generic consequence of strong interactions, periodic correlations must appear in the atom shot noise of bosonic absorption images, similar to the bosonic Mott insulator [S. F\"olling et al., Nature (London) 434, 481 (2005)]. The composites can also be detected directly and their quasimomentum distribution measured. This method---an extension of the technique of noise correlation interferometry [E. Altman et al., Phys. Rev. A 79, 013603 (2004)]---relies on measuring higher order correlations between the bosonic and fermionic shot noise in the absorption images. However, it fails above a certain number of the constituents due to a dramatic increase of uncorrelated noise.
We propose and discuss methods for detecting quasimolecular complexes which are expected to form in strongly interacting optical lattice systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the detection of composite fermions forming in Bose-Fermi mixtures. We argue that, as an indirect indication of the composite fermions and a generic consequence of strong interactions, periodic correlations must appear in the atom shot noise of bosonic absorption images, similar to the bosonic Mott insulator [S. F"olling et al., Nature (London) 434, 481 (2005)]. The composites can also be detected directly and their quasimomentum distribution measured. This method---an extension of the technique of noise correlation interferometry [E. Altman et al., Phys. Rev. A 79, 013603 (2004)]---relies on measuring higher order correlations between the bosonic and fermionic shot noise in the absorption images. However, it fails above a certain number of the constituents due to a dramatic increase of uncorrelated noise.
We present a review of properties of ultracold atomic Fermi-Bose mixtures in inhomogeneous and random optical lattices. In the strong interacting limit and at very low temperatures, fermions form, together with bosons or bosonic holes, composite fermions. Composite fermions behave as a spinless interacting Fermi gas, and in the presence of local disorder they interact via random couplings and feel effective random local potential. This opens a wide variety of possibilities of realizing various kinds of ultracold quantum disordered systems. In this paper we review these possibilities, discuss the accessible quantum disordered phases, and methods for their detection. The discussed quantum phases include Fermi glasses, quantum spin glasses, ``dirty'' superfluids, disordered metallic phases, and phases involving quantum percolation.
A mixture of ultracold bosons and fermions placed in an optical lattice constitutes a novel kind of quantum gas, and leads to phenomena, which so far has been discussed neither in atomic physics, nor in condensed matter physics. We discuss the phase diagram at low temperatures, and in the limit of strong atom-atom interactions, and predict the existence of quantum phases that involve pairing of fermions with one or more bosons, or, respectively, bosonic holes. The resulting composite fermions may form, depending on the system parameters, a normal Fermi liquid, a density wave, a superfluid liquid, or an insulator with fermionic domains. We discuss the feasibility for observing such phases in current experiments.
We study distinctive features of local Mott insulator of trapped Bose-Fermi mixture systems on an optical lattice by using Monte-Carlo simulations of one-dimensional Bose-Fermi-Hubbard model. It was found that each species of the bosons and the fermions in a Mott insulator state had a finite stiffness but the density correlation function exhibited a quasi-long-range-order. This strongly suggested that in actual experiments the bosons and fermions of a commensurate filling with the lattice sites would form a Mott insulator state under strong interatomic interactions and have an order in their positional configuration.
We investigate theoretically the low-temperature physics of a two-component ultracold mixture of bosons and fermions in disordered optical lattices. We focus on the strongly correlated regime. We show that, under specific conditions, composite fermions, made of one fermion plus one bosonic hole, form. The composite picture is used to derive an effective Hamiltonian whose parameters can be controlled via the boson-boson and the boson-fermion interactions, the tunneling terms and the inhomogeneities. We finally investigate the quantum phase diagram of the composite fermions and we show that it corresponds to the formation of Fermi glasses, spin glasses, and quantum percolation regimes.
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide an extremely clean and controllable setting to explore quantum many-body phases of matter. Here we give a brief review of the strong-correlation physics that has been realized using such ultracold atoms in optical lattices ranging from the realization of Hubbard models to studies of quantum magnetism and the detection of single atoms with lattice site resolution. All this has opened up fundamentally new opportunities for the investigation of quantum many-body systems. Introduction Over the past years, ultracold atoms in optical lattices have emerged as versatile new systems to explore the physics of quantum many-body systems. On the one hand, they can be helpful in gaining a better understanding of known phases of matter and their dynamical behavior; on the other hand, they allow one to realize completely novel quantum systems that have not been studied before in nature [1, 2, 3]. Commonly, the approach of exploring quantum many-body systems in such a way is referred to as “quantum simulations.” Examples of some of the first strongly interacting many-body phases that have been realized both in lattices and in the continuum include the quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator [4, 5, 6], fermionic Mott insulators [7, 8], the achievement of a Tonks- Girardeau gas [9, 10], and the realization of the Bose-Einsten condensate (BEC)– Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) crossover (see also Chapter 12) in Fermi gas mixture [11] using Feshbach resonances [12]. In almost all of these experiments, detection was limited to time-of-flight imaging or more refined derived techniques that mainly characterized the momentum distribution of the quantum gas [2]. For several years, researchers in the field have therefore aspired to employ in situ single-particle detection methods for the analysis of ultracold quantum gases. Only recently has it become possible to implement such imaging techniques, marking a milestone for the characterization and manipulation of ultracold quantum gases [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. In our discussion, we will focus on one of the most successful of these techniques based on high-resolution fluorescence imaging. Despite being a rather new technique, such quantum gas microscopy has already proven to be an enabling technology for probing and manipulating quantum many-body systems. For the first time, controllable and strongly interacting many-body systems, as realized with ultracold atoms, could be observed on a local scale [17, 16].
Abstract. We investigate theoretically the low-temperature physics of ultracold Fermi-Bose mixtures in optical lattices. We show that composite Fermions form under specific conditions in the srongly correlated regime. The composite picture is used to derive an effective Hamiltonian whose parameters can be controlled. We finally investigate the quantum phase diagram of the composites and show that it corresponds to the formation of Fermi glasses, spin glasses, and quantum percolation regimes. PACS numbers: 03.75.Kk,03.75.Lm,05.30.Jp,64.60.CnStrongly correlated Fermi-Bose mixtures in disordered optical lattices 2 1. Introduction to disordered quantum systems 1.1. From condensed matter physics to ultracold atomic gases Quantum disordered systems is a very active research field in condensed matter physics (CM) initiated by the work by P.W. Anderson [1] who first pointed out that quenched disorder can dramatically change the properties of a quantum system compared to