601 research outputs found
Artificial Staggered Magnetic Field for Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices
A time-dependent optical lattice with staggered particle current in the
tight-binding regime was considered that can be described by a time-independent
effective lattice model with an artificial staggered magnetic field. The low
energy description of a single-component fermion in this lattice at
half-filling is provided by two copies of ideal two-dimensional massless Dirac
fermions. The Dirac cones are generally anisotropic and can be tuned by the
external staggered flux \p. For bosons, the staggered flux modifies the
single-particle spectrum such that in the weak coupling limit, depending on the
flux \p, distinct superfluid phases are realized. Their properties are
discussed, the nature of the phase transitions between them is establised, and
Bogoliubov theory is used to determine their excitation spectra. Then the
generalized superfluid-Mott-insulator transition is studied in the presence of
the staggered flux and the complete phase diagram is established. Finally, the
momentum distribution of the distinct superfluid phases is obtained, which
provides a clear experimental signature of each phase in ballistic expansion
experiments.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Internal Josephson Oscillations for Distinct Momenta Bose-Einstein Condensates
The internal Josephson oscillations between an atomic Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC) and a molecular one are studied for atoms in a square optical
lattice subjected to a staggered gauge field. The system is described by a
Bose-Hubbard model with complex and anisotropic hopping parameters that are
different for each species, i.e., atoms and molecules. When the flux per
plaquette for each species is small, the system oscillates between two
conventional zero-momentum condensates. However, there is a regime of
parameters in which Josephson oscillations between a vortex-carrying atomic
condensate (finite momentum BEC) and a conventional zero-momentum molecular
condensate may be realized. The experimental observation of the oscillations
between these qualitatively distinct BEC's is possible with state-of-the-art
Ramsey interference techniques.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Competing Superconducting States for Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices with Artificial Staggered Magnetic Field
We study superconductivity in an ultracold Bose-Fermi mixture loaded into a
square optical lattice subjected to a staggered flux. While the bosons form a
superfluid at very low temperature and weak interaction, the interacting
fermions experience an additional long-ranged attractive interaction mediated
by phonons in the bosonic superfluid. This leads us to consider a generalized
Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor attractive interactions, which
give rise to two competing superconducting channels. We use the
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory to determine the regimes where distinct
superconducting ground states are stabilized, and find that the non-local
pairing channel favors a superconducting ground state which breaks both the
gauge and the lattice symmetries, thus realizing unconventional
superconductivity. Furthermore, the particular structure of the single-particle
spectrum leads to unexpected consequences, for example, a dome-shaped
superconducting region in the temperature versus filing fraction phase diagram,
with a normal phase that comprises much richer physics than a Fermi-liquid.
Notably, the relevant temperature regime and coupling strength is readily
accessible in state of the art experiments with ultracold trapped atoms
Spin- and band-ferromagnetism in trilayer graphene
We study the ground state properties of an ABA-stacked trilayer graphene. The
low energy band structure can be described by a combination of both a linear
and a quadratic particle-hole symmetric dispersions, reminiscent of monolayer-
and bilayer-graphene, respectively. The multi-band structure offers more
channels for instability towards ferromagnetism when the Coulomb interaction is
taken into account. Indeed, if one associates a pseudo-spin 1/2 degree of
freedom to the bands (parabolic/linear), it is possible to realize also a
band-ferromagnetic state, where there is a shift in the energy bands, since
they fill up differently. By using a variational procedure, we compute the
exchange energies for all possible variational ground states and identify the
parameter space for the occurrence of spin- and band-ferromagnetic
instabilities as a function of doping and interaction strength.Comment: 9 pages/ 8 figure
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