Interacting electrons in a two-dimensional disordered environment: Effect of a Zeeman magnetic field

The effect of a Zeeman magnetic field coupled to the spin of the electrons on the conducting properties of the disordered Hubbard model is studied. Using the Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo method, the temperature- and magnetic-field- dependent conductivity is calculated,as well as the degree of spin polarization. We find that the Zeeman magnetic field suppresses the metallic behavior present for certain values of interaction- and disorder- strength, and is able to induce a metal-insulator transition at a critical field strength. It is argued that the qualitative features of magnetoconductance in this microscopic model containing both repulsive interactions and disorder are in agreement with experimental findings in two-dimensional electron- and hole-gases in semiconductor structures.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo Study of the Screening of the One Body Potential near a Metal-Insulator Transition

In this paper we present a determinant quantum monte carlo study of the two dimensional Hubbard model with random site disorder. We show that, as in the case of bond disorder, the system undergoes a transition from an Anderson insulating phase to a metallic phase as the onsite repulsion U is increased beyond a critical value U_c. However, there appears to be no sharp signal of this metal-insulator transition in the screened site energies. We observe that, while the system remains metallic for interaction values upto twice U_c, the conductivity is maximal in the metallic phase just beyond U_c, and decreases for larger correlation.Comment: 6 pages, 10 eps figures, Revtex

Ordered states in the disordered Hubbard model

The Hubbard model is studied in which disorder is introduced by putting the on-site interaction to zero on a fraction f of (impurity) sites of a square lattice. Using Quantum Monte Carlo methods and Dynamical Mean Field theory we find that antiferromagnetic long-range order is initially enhanced at half-filling and stabilized off half-filling by the disorder. The Mott-Hubbard charge gap of the pure system is broken up into two pieces by the disorder: one incompressible state remains at average density n=1 and another can be seen slightly below n=1+f. Qualitative explanations are provided.Comment: 17 pages, including 8 figures. Paper for Festschrift in honor of Hans van Leeuwen's 65th birthda

Dynamic response of trapped ultracold bosons on optical lattices

We study the dynamic response of ultracold bosons trapped in one-dimensional optical lattices using Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the boson Hubbard model with a confining potential. The dynamic structure factor reveals the inhomogeneous nature of the low temperature state, which contains coexisting Mott insulator and superfluid regions. We present new evidence for local quantum criticality and shed new light on the experimental excitation spectrum of 87Rb atoms confined in one dimension.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Phase coherence, visibility, and the superfluid--Mott-insulator transition on one-dimensional optical lattices

We study the phase coherence and visibility of trapped atomic condensates on one-dimensional optical lattices, by means of quantum Monte-Carlo simulations. We obtain structures in the visibility similar to the kinks recently observed experimentally by Gerbier et.al.[Phy. Rev. Lett. 95, 050404 (2005); Phys. Rev. A 72, 053606 (2005)]. We examine these features in detail and offer a connection to the evolution of the density profiles as the depth of the lattice is increased. Our simulations reveal that as the interaction strength, U, is increased, the evolution of superfluid and Mott-insulating domains stall for finite intervals of U. The density profiles do not change with increasing U. We show here that in one dimension the visibility provides unequivocal signatures of the melting of Mott domains with densities larger than one.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Superfluid and Mott Insulator phases of one-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixtures

We study the ground state phases of Bose-Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional optical lattices with quantum Monte Carlo simulations using the Canonical Worm algorithm. Depending on the filling of bosons and fermions, and the on-site intra- and inter-species interaction, different kinds of incompressible and superfluid phases appear. On the compressible side, correlations between bosons and fermions can lead to a distinctive behavior of the bosonic superfluid density and the fermionic stiffness, as well as of the equal-time Green functions, which allow one to identify regions where the two species exhibit anticorrelated flow. We present here complete phase diagrams for these systems at different fillings and as a function of the interaction parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figure

Mott Domains of Bosons Confined on Optical Lattices

In the absence of a confining potential, the boson Hubbard model in its ground state is known to exhibit a superfluid to Mott insulator quantum phase transition at commensurate fillings and strong on-site repulsion. In this paper, we use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to study the ground state of the one dimensional bosonic Hubbard model in a trap. We show that some, but not all, aspects of the Mott insulating phase persist when a confining potential is present. The Mott behavior is present for a continuous range of incommensurate fillings, a very different situation from the unconfined case. Furthermore the establishment of the Mott phase does not proceed via a quantum phase transition in the traditional sense. These observations have important implications for the interpretation of experimental results for atoms trapped on optical lattices. Initial results show that, qualitatively, the same results persist in higher dimensions.Comment: Revtex file, five figures, include

Critical temperature for the two-dimensional attractive Hubbard Model

The critical temperature for the attractive Hubbard model on a square lattice is determined from the analysis of two independent quantities, the helicity modulus, $\rho_s$, and the pairing correlation function, $P_s$. These quantities have been calculated through Quantum Monte Carlo simulations for lattices up to $18\times 18$, and for several densities, in the intermediate-coupling regime. Imposing the universal-jump condition for an accurately calculated $\rho_s$, together with thorough finite-size scaling analyses (in the spirit of the phenomenological renormalization group) of $P_s$, suggests that $T_c$ is considerably higher than hitherto assumed.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Particle-Hole Symmetry and the Effect of Disorder on the Mott-Hubbard Insulator

Recent experiments have emphasized that our understanding of the interplay of electron correlations and randomness in solids is still incomplete. We address this important issue and demonstrate that particle-hole (ph) symmetry plays a crucial role in determining the effects of disorder on the transport and thermodynamic properties of the half-filled Hubbard Hamiltonian. We show that the low-temperature conductivity decreases with increasing disorder when ph-symmetry is preserved, and shows the opposite behavior, i.e. conductivity increases with increasing disorder, when ph-symmetry is broken. The Mott insulating gap is insensitive to weak disorder when there is ph-symmetry, whereas in its absence the gap diminishes with increasing disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The random disc thrower problem

We describe a number of approaches to a question posed by Philips Research, described as the "random disc thrower" problem. Given a square grid of points in the plane, we cover the points by equal-sized planar discs according to the following random process. At each step, a random point of the grid is chosen from the set of uncovered points as the centre of a new disc. This is an abstract model of spatial reuse in wireless networks. A question of Philips Research asks what, as a function of the grid length, is the expected number of discs chosen before the process can no longer continue? Our main results concern the one-dimensional variant of this problem, which can be solved reasonably well, though we also provide a number of approaches towards an approximate solution of the original two-dimensional problem. The two-dimensional problem is related to an old, unresolved conjecture ([6]) that has been the object of close study in both probability theory and statistical physics. Keywords: generating functions, Markov random fields, random sequential adsorption, Rényi’s parking problem, wireless network