We use second- and fourth-order correlation functions accessible in time-of-flight images to investigate the effects of rotation on one-dimensional ultracold bosons confined to a ring lattice. There exists a critical rotation frequency at which the ground state of a weakly interacting and integer-filled atomic gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition of two states with different circulation. The formation of such a quantum superposition (``cat'') state is accompanied by the opening of a gap in the spectrum, and by a sudden rearrangement of the momentum distribution which lowers the threshold of the Mott insulator transition. We show that both the entangled character of the ground state and the enhancement of quantum correlations can be detected in the density-density correlations of the expanding cloud. Our studies demonstrate the usefulness of these correlations for identifying physics in cold atomic systems.
We use second- and fourth-order correlation functions accessible in time-of-flight images to investigate the effects of rotation on one-dimensional ultracold bosons confined to a ring lattice. There exists a critical rotation frequency at which the ground state of a weakly interacting and integer-filled atomic gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition of two states with different circulation. The formation of such a quantum superposition (``cat'') state is accompanied by the opening of a gap in the spectrum, and by a sudden rearrangement of the momentum distribution which lowers the threshold of the Mott insulator transition. We show that both the entangled character of the ground state and the enhancement of quantum correlations can be detected in the density-density correlations of the expanding cloud. Our studies demonstrate the usefulness of these correlations for identifying physics in cold atomic systems.
We investigate the effects of rotation on one-dimensional ultracold bosons confined to optical ring lattices. First, we show that there exists a critical rotation frequency at which the ground state of a weakly interacting and integer-filled atomic gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition state with different circulation. Second, we point out several advantages of using slightly non-uniform ring lattices. Finally, we demonstrate that different quasi-momentum states can be distinguished in time-of-flight absorption imaging and propose to probe correlations via the many-body oscillations induced by a sudden change in the rotation frequency.
We investigate the effects of rotation on one-dimensional ultracold bosons confined to optical ring lattices. First, we consider a uniform lattice and show that there exists a critical rotation frequency at which the ground state of a weakly-interacting and integer-filled atomic gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition of two states with different circulation. Second, we point out several advantages of slightly non-uniform ring lattices for the generation of such kind of states. Finally, we demonstrate that different quasi-momentum states can be distinguished in time-of-flight absorption imaging and propose to probe correlations via the many-body oscillations induced by a sudden change in the rotation frequency.
In this thesis we investigate strongly-correlated states of ultracold bosonic atoms in rotating ring lattices and arrays of double-well potentials. In the first part of the thesis, we study the tunneling dynamics of ultracold bosons in double-well potentials. In the non-interacting limit single-particle transitions dominate, while in the interaction-dominated regime correlated tunneling of all particles prevails. At intermediate times of the many-particle flopping process correlated states occur, but the timescales of these processes increase dramatically with the number of particles. Using an array of double-well potentials, a large number of such few-particle superposition states can be produced in parallel. In the second part of the thesis, we study the effects of rotation on ultracold bosons confined to one-dimensional ring lattices. We find that at commensurate filling there exists a critical rotation frequency, at which the ground state of the weakly-interacting gas is fragmented into a macroscopic superposition of different quasi-momentum states. We demonstrate that the generation of such superposition states using slightly non-uniform ring lattices has several practical advantages. Moreover, we show that different quasi-momentum states can be distinguished in time-of-flight absorption imaging and propose to probe correlations via the many-body oscillations induced by a sudden change in the rotation frequency. Finally, we compare these macroscopic superposition states to those occurring in superconducting quantum interference devices. In the third part of the thesis, we demonstrate the creation of entangled states with ultracold bosonic atoms by dynamical manipulation of the shape of the lattice potential. To this end, we consider an optical superlattice that allows both the splitting of each site into a double-well potential and the variation of the height of the potential barrier between the sites. We show how to use this array of double-well potentials to perform entangling operations between neighboring qubits encoded on the Zeeman levels of the atoms. As one possible application, we present a method of realizing a resource state for measurement-based quantum computation via Bell-pair measurements. In the final part of the thesis, we study ultracold bosons on a two-dimensional square lattice in the presence of an effective magnetic field and point out a couple of features this system has in common with ultracold bosons in one-dimensional rotating ring lattices.
Ultracold bosons in rotating ring lattices have previously been shown to form macroscopic superpositions of different quasimomentum states. We demonstrate that the generation of this kind of state using slightly nonuniform ring lattices has several advantages: the energy gap decreases less severely with increasing number of particles, the sensitivity to detunings from the critical rotation frequency is reduced, and the scheme is not limited to commensurate filling. We show that different quasimomentum states can be distinguished in time-of-flight absorption imaging and propose to probe correlations via the many-body oscillations induced by a sudden change in the rotation frequency.
We investigate the ground state properties of the repulsive interacting bosons in an one dimensional rotating lattice ring, and reveal that the superfluid density of the system and the mass current it can carry in the rotating coordinate are periodic functions of the velocity of the lattice. In the weakly interacting limit, the vortices are generated at the critical velocities, and in the strongly interacting limit, the phase twist of the bosons induced by the rotating lattice manifests the superfluid density and drive the system to undergo phase transitions between the superfluid and Mott insulator.
In this dissertation, we study rotational properties of ultracold bosonic quantum gases in two trapped configurations, a quasi-two-dimensional gas in a harmonic trap and a quasi-one-dimensional gas in a toroidal trap. First, we investigate the effects of correlations on the properties of the ground state of the rotating harmonically-trapped Bose gas by adding Bogoliubov fluctuations to the mean-field ground state of an N-particle single-vortex system. We demonstrate that the fluctuation-induced correlations lower the energy compared to that of the mean-field ground state, that the vortex core is pushed slightly away from the center of the trap, and that an unstable mode with negative energy (for rotations slower than a critical frequency) emerges in the energy spectrum, thus, pointing to a better state for slow rotation. We construct mean-field ground states of 0-, 1-, and 2-vortex states as a function of rotation rate and determine the critical frequencies for transitions between these states, as well as the critical frequency for appearance of a metastable state with an off-center vortex and its image vortex in the evanescent tail of the cloud. Then, we show how the configuration-space form of the above-mentioned Bogoliubov ground-state wave function of a bosonic condensate with a single vortex in a harmonic trap can be described in terms of bosonic Jastrow correlations. We then generalize this result to study the effects of such correlations on a mean-field vortex lattice state and show that the included correlations lower the energy below that of the mean-field state. Although the reduction is relatively small, it is a precursor of the more general expected effect of correlations in describing the melting of the vortex lattice at a high angular momentum per particle. Finally, we study the stability and dynamics of an ultracold bosonic gas trapped in a toroidal geometry and driven by rotation in the absence of dissipation. We first delineate, via the Bogoliubov mode expansion, the regions of stability and the nature of instabilities of the system for both repulsive and attractive interaction strengths. To study the response of the system to variations in the rotation rate, we introduce a “disorder” potential, breaking the rotational symmetry. We demonstrate the breakdown of adiabaticity as the rotation rate is slowly varied and find forced tunneling between the eigenstates of the system. The nonadiabaticity is signaled by the appearance of a swallow-tail loop in the lowest-energy level, a general sign of hysteresis. Then, we show that this system is in one-to-one correspondence with a trapped gas in a double-well potential and thus exhibits macroscopic quantum self-trapping. Finally, we show that self-trapping is a direct manifestation of the behavior of the lowest-energy level.