Twisted superfluid phase in the extended one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model

In one-dimensional systems a twisted superfluid phase is found which is induced by a spontaneous breaking of the time-reversal symmetry. Using the density-matrix renormalization group allows us to show that the excitation energy gap closes exponentially causing a quasi-degenerate ground state. The two degenerate ground states are connected by the time-reversal symmetry which manifests itself in an alternating complex phase of the long-range correlation function. The quantum phase transition to the twisted superfluid is driven by pair tunneling processes in an extended Bose-Hubbard model. The phase boundaries of several other phases are discussed including a supersolid, a pair superfluid, and a pair supersolid phase as well as a highly unconventional Mott insulator with a degenerate ground state and a staggered pair correlation function.Comment: 5 page

Excitation spectrum of Mott shells in optical lattices

We theoretically study the excitation spectrum of confined macroscopic optical lattices in the Mott-insulating limit. For large systems, a fast numerical method is proposed to calculate the ground state filling and excitation energies. We introduce many-particle on-site energies capturing multi-band effects and discuss tunnelling on a perturbative level using an effectively restricted Hilbert space. Results for small one-dimensional lattices obtained by this method are in good agreement with the exact multi-band diagonalization of the Hamiltonian. Spectral properties associated with the formation of regions with constant filling, so-called Mott shells, are investigated and interfaces between the shells with strong particle fluctuations are characterized by gapless local excitations

Localization and delocalization of ultracold bosonic atoms in finite optical lattices

We study bosonic atoms in small optical lattices by exact diagonalization and observe a striking similarity to the superfluid to Mott insulator transition in macroscopic systems. The momentum distribution, the formation of an energy gap, and the pair correlation function show only a weak size dependence. For noncommensurate filling we reveal in deep lattices a mixture of localized and delocalized particles, which is sensitive to lattice imperfections. Breaking the lattice symmetry causes a Bose-glass-like behavior. We discuss the nature of excited states and orbital effects by using an exact diagonalization technique that includes higher bands.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Published versio

Emulating Molecular Orbitals and Electronic Dynamics with Ultracold Atoms

In recent years, ultracold atoms in optical lattices have proven their great value as quantum simulators for studying strongly correlated phases and complex phenomena in solid-state systems. Here we reveal their potential as quantum simulators for molecular physics and propose a technique to image the three-dimensional molecular orbitals with high resolution. The outstanding tunability of ultracold atoms in terms of potential and interaction offer fully adjustable model systems for gaining deep insight into the electronic structure of molecules. We study the orbitals of an artificial benzene molecule and discuss the effect of tunable interactions in its conjugated pi electron system with special regard to localization and spin order. The dynamical time scales of ultracold atom simulators are on the order of milliseconds, which allows for the time-resolved monitoring of a broad range of dynamical processes. As an example, we compute the hole dynamics in the conjugated pi system of the artificial benzene molecule.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Improved physiological noise regression in fNIRS: a multimodal extension of the General Linear Model using temporally embedded Canonical Correlation Analysis

For the robust estimation of evoked brain activity from functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals, it is crucial to reduce nuisance signals from systemic physiology and motion. The current best practice incorporates short-separation (SS) fNIRS measurements as regressors in a General Linear Model (GLM). However, several challenging signal characteristics such as non-instantaneous and non-constant coupling are not yet addressed by this approach and additional auxiliary signals are not optimally exploited. We have recently introduced a new methodological framework for the unsupervised multivariate analysis of fNIRS signals using Blind Source Separation (BSS) methods. Building onto the framework, in this manuscript we show how to incorporate the advantages of regularized temporally embedded Canonical Correlation Analysis (tCCA) into the supervised GLM. This approach allows flexible integration of any number of auxiliary modalities and signals. We provide guidance for the selection of optimal parameters and auxiliary signals for the proposed GLM extension. Its performance in the recovery of evoked HRFs is then evaluated using both simulated ground truth data and real experimental data and compared with the GLM with short-separation regression. Our results show that the GLM with tCCA significantly improves upon the current best practice, yielding significantly better results across all applied metrics: Correlation (HbO max. +45%), Root Mean Squared Error (HbO max. -55%), F-Score (HbO up to 3.25-fold) and p-value as well as power spectral density of the noise floor. The proposed method can be incorporated into the GLM in an easily applicable way that flexibly combines any available auxiliary signals into optimal nuisance regressors. This work has potential significance both for conventional neuroscientific fNIRS experiments as well as for emerging applications of fNIRS in everyday environments, medicine and BCI, where high Contrast to Noise Ratio is of importance for single trial analysis.Published versio