Phase separation and temperature effects in mixture of two atomic species

Abstract

This thesis investigates bosonic mixtures in ultra-cold atom systems. We mainly focus on mixtures of two bosonic twin-species trapped in optical lattices, paying particular attention to the properties of spatial separation. The study is carried out by means of the path-integral quantum Monte Carlo by the two-worm algorithm and by analytical calculations where the complexity of the system allows it. The mixture is trapped in a square optical lattice at different filling and temperature conditions. We explore the ground-state phase diagram showing that various quantum phases can arise depending on the interplay between intra- and inter-species interactions. Demixed phases, characterized by spatial separation of the two species, are studied in details determining under which conditions they can be stabilized. The influence of temperature, filling factor and harmonic trap on phase separation is also investigated. An interesting dependence of the degree of demixing from temperature has been found, suggesting new ways to measure the temperature of a two-component bosonic mixture. We also study spatial phase separation in the simple case of a two-component mixture in a double-well potential both numerically and by means of the Bogoliubov approximaton. We show that even in this simple case the main features of the mixing/ demixing phase transitions are observed, and that the transition is characterized by a spectral collapse of the energy eigenvalues reflecting the dramatic change of algebraic structure of the model.