Migration of bosonic particles across a Mott insulator to superfluid phase interface

We consider a boundary between a Mott insulator and a superfluid region of a Bose-Hubbard model at unit filling. Initially both regions are decoupled and cooled to their respective ground states. We show that, after switching on a small tunneling rate between both regions, all particles of the Mott region migrate to the superfluid area. This migration takes place whenever the difference between the chemical potentials of both regions is less than the maximal energy of any eigenmode of the superfluid. We verify our results numerically with DMRG simulations and explain them analytically with a master equation approximation, finding good agreement between both approaches. Finally we carry out a feasibility study for the observation of the effect in coupled arrays of micro-cavities and optical lattices.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Inference from Matrix Products: A Heuristic Spin Glass Algorithm

We present an algorithm for finding ground states of two dimensional spin glass systems based on ideas from matrix product states in quantum information theory. The algorithm works directly at zero temperature and defines an approximate "boundary Hamiltonian" whose accuracy depends on a parameter $k$. We test the algorithm against exact methods on random field and random bond Ising models, and we find that accurate results require a $k$ which scales roughly polynomially with the system size. The algorithm also performs well when tested on small systems with arbitrary interactions, where no fast, exact algorithms exist. The time required is significantly less than Monte Carlo schemes.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, minor typos fixe

Electromagnetic Interaction in the System of Multimonopoles and Vortex Rings

Behavior of static axially symmetric monopole-antimonopole and vortex ring solutions of the SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory in an external uniform magnetic field is considered. It is argued that the axially symmetric monopole-antimonopole chains and vortex rings can be treated as a bounded electromagnetic system of the magnetic charges and the electric current rings. The magnitude of the external field is a parameter which may be used to test the structure of the static potential of the effective electromagnetic interaction between the monopoles with opposite orientation in the group space. It is shown that for a non-BPS solutions there is a local minimum of this potential.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, some minor corrections, version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Critical behavior of the Random-Field Ising Magnet with long range correlated disorder

We study the correlated-disorder driven zero-temperature phase transition of the Random-Field Ising Magnet using exact numerical ground-state calculations for cubic lattices. We consider correlations of the quenched disorder decaying proportional to r^a, where r is the distance between two lattice sites and a<0. To obtain exact ground states, we use a well established mapping to the graph-theoretical maximum-flow problem, which allows us to study large system sizes of more than two million spins. We use finite-size scaling analyses for values a={-1,-2,-3,-7} to calculate the critical point and the critical exponents characterizing the behavior of the specific heat, magnetization, susceptibility and of the correlation length close to the critical point. We find basically the same critical behavior as for the RFIM with delta-correlated disorder, except for the finite-size exponent of the susceptibility and for the case a=-1, where the results are also compatible with a phase transition at infinitesimal disorder strength. A summary of this work can be found at the papercore database at www.papercore.org.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figure

Strong photon non-linearities and photonic Mott insulators

We show, that photon non-linearities in electromagnetically induced transparency can be at least one order of magnitude larger than predicted in all previous approaches. As an application we demonstrate that, in this regime they give rise to very strong photon - photon interactions which are strong enough to make an experimental realization of a photonic Mott insulator state feasible in arrays of coupled ultra high-Q micro-cavities.Comment: minor changes, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Geometric Phases and Critical Phenomena in a Chain of Interacting Spins

The geometric phase can act as a signature for critical regions of interacting spin chains in the limit where the corresponding circuit in parameter space is shrunk to a point and the number of spins is extended to infinity; for finite circuit radii or finite spin chain lengths, the geometric phase is always trivial (a multiple of 2pi). In this work, by contrast, two related signatures of criticality are proposed which obey finite-size scaling and which circumvent the need for assuming any unphysical limits. They are based on the notion of the Bargmann invariant whose phase may be regarded as a discretized version of Berry's phase. As circuits are considered which are composed of a discrete, finite set of vertices in parameter space, they are able to pass directly through a critical point, rather than having to circumnavigate it. The proposed mechanism is shown to provide a diagnostic tool for criticality in the case of a given non-solvable one-dimensional spin chain with nearest-neighbour interactions in the presence of an external magnetic field.Comment: 7 Figure

Excitation and Entanglement Transfer Near Quantum Critical Points

Recently, there has been growing interest in employing condensed matter systems such as quantum spin or harmonic chains as quantum channels for short distance communication. Many properties of such chains are determined by the spectral gap between their ground and excited states. In particular this gap vanishes at critical points of quantum phase transitions. In this article we study the relation between the transfer speed and quality of such a system and the size of its spectral gap. We find that the transfer is almost perfect but slow for large spectral gaps and fast but rather inefficient for small gaps.Comment: submitted to Optics and Spectroscopy special issue for ICQO'200

Symmetries and Triplet Dispersion in a Modified Shastry-Sutherland Model for SrCu_2(BO_3)_2

We investigate the one-triplet dispersion in a modified Shastry-Sutherland Model for SrCu_2(BO_3)_2 by means of a series expansion about the limit of strong dimerization. Our perturbative method is based on a continuous unitary transformation that maps the original Hamiltonian to an effective, energy quanta conserving block diagonal Hamiltonian H_{eff}. The dispersion splits into two branches which are nearly degenerated. We analyse the symmetries of the model and show that space group operations are necessary to explain the degeneracy of the dispersion at k=0 and at the border of the magnetic Brillouin zone. Moreover, we investigate the behaviour of the dispersion for small |k| and compare our results to INS data.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures accepted by J. Phys.: Condens. Matte