Einstein Condensates In Optical Lattices Research Articles

Energy spectrum and superfluidity breakdown of Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattice under density-dependent artificial gauge field

Nonlinear feedback between the gauge field and the material field can yield novel quantum phenomena. Here, the interplay between a density-dependent artificial gauge field and Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) trapped in an optical lattice is studied. The energy spectrum and superfluidity represented by energetic and dynamical stabilities of the system are systematically discussed. A density-dependent artificial gauge field with a back-action between the BECs dynamics and the gauge field induces an effective atomic interaction that depends on the quasi-momentum and density of the condensates, resulting in a symmetry-broken energy spectrum and exotic stability phase diagram, that is, the system is only stable in a certain range of atoms density and under a limited lattice strength. The density-dependent artificial gauge field changes the sequence for the emergence of energetic and dynamical instability and the regimes of the energetic and dynamical instabilities are significantly separated, offering an efficient way to examine the energetic and dynamical instabilities of superfluids separately. In particular, the density-dependent artificial gauge field, as a mechanism for transferring momentum to the fluid, results in dynamic instability of the condensates even in free space. Our results provide deep insights into the dynamical response of superfluid systems to gauge fields and have potential applications for the coherent control of exotic superfluid states.

Two-dimensional anisotropic vortex–bright soliton and its dynamics in dipolar Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattice

We study construction and dynamics of two-dimensional (2D) anisotropic vortex–bright (VB) soliton in spinor dipolar Bose–Einstein condensates confined in a 2D optical lattice (OL), with two localized components linearly mixed by the spin–orbit coupling and long-range dipole–dipole interaction (DDI). It is found that the OL and DDI can support stable anisotropic VB soliton in the present setting for arbitrarily small value of norm N. We then present a new method via examining the mean square error of norm share of bright component to implement stability analysis. It is revealed that one can control the stability of anisotropic VB soliton only by adjusting OL depth for a fixed DDI. In addition, the dynamics of the anisotropic VB soliton was studied by applying the kick to them. The mobility of the single kicked VB soliton is Rabbi-like oscillation. However, for the collision dynamics of two kicked anisotropic VB solitons, their properties mainly depend on their initial distance and OL, and they can realize the transition from the bright component to the vortex component. Our work may provide a convenient way to prepare and manipulate anisotropic VB soliton in high-dimensional space.

Phase-space distributions of Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical lattice: optimal shaping and reconstruction

We apply quantum optimal control to shape the phase-space distribution of Bose–Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional optical lattice. By a time-dependent modulation of the lattice position, determined from optimal control theory, we prepare, in the phase space of each lattice site, translated and squeezed Gaussian states, and superpositions of Gaussian states. Complete reconstruction of these non-trivial states is performed through a maximum likelihood state tomography. As a practical application of our method to quantum simulations, we initialize the atomic wavefunction in an optimal Floquet-state superposition to enhance dynamical tunneling signals.

Stripe and supersolid phases of spin–orbit coupled spin-2 Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical lattice

We study the ground-state phases of two-dimensional spin–orbit coupled spin-2 Bose–Einstein condensates in a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice. Due to the competition among optical lattice, spin–orbit coupling and spin-exchange interaction, the exotic ground-state phases are found, i.e. three types of the stripe phases and three types of the supersolid phases. The spin-exchange interaction can adjust the direction of the stripe in the stripe phase and generate various vortex lattice structures in the supersolid phase, which shows that the spin-exchange interaction plays an important role in the formation of the stripe and supersolid phases of spin–orbit coupled spin-2 Bose–Einstein condensates in an optical lattice.

Modulated amplitude waves with non-trivial phase of multi-component Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices

Modulated amplitude waves with non-trivial phase of multi-component Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices

Parametric instabilities in resonantly-driven Bose–Einstein condensates

Shaking optical lattices in a resonant manner offers an efficient and versatile method to devise artificial gauge fields and topological band structures for ultracold atomic gases. This was recently demonstrated through the experimental realization of the Harper–Hofstadter model, which combined optical superlattices and resonant time-modulations. Adding inter-particle interactions to these engineered band systems is expected to lead to strongly-correlated states with topological features, such as fractional Chern insulators. However, the interplay between interactions and external time-periodic drives typically triggers violent instabilities and uncontrollable heating, hence potentially ruling out the possibility of accessing such intriguing states of matter in experiments. In this work, we study the early-stage parametric instabilities that occur in systems of resonantly-driven Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices. We apply and extend an approach based on Bogoliubov theory (Lellouch et al 2017 Phys. Rev. X 7 021015) to a variety of resonantly-driven band models, from a simple shaken Wannier–Stark ladder to the more intriguing driven-induced Harper–Hofstadter model. In particular, we provide ab initio numerical and analytical predictions for the stability properties of these topical models. This work sheds light on general features that could guide current experiments to stable regimes of operation.

Modulational Instability of Dipolar Bose–Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices with Three-Body Interactions**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No 11647017, and the Science Research Fund of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology under Grant No BJ16-03.

Motivated by the recent experiment [Nature 530 (2016) 194] in which a stable droplet in a dipolar quantum gas has been created by the interaction-induced instability, we focus on the modulation instability of an optically-trapped dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate with three-body interaction. Within the mean-field level, we analytically solve the discrete cubic-quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation with dipole–dipole interaction loaded into a deep optical lattice and show how combined effects of the three-body interaction and dipole–dipole interaction on the condition of modulational instability. Our results show that the interplay of the three-body interaction and dipole–dipole interaction can dramatically change the modulation instability condition compared with the ordinary Gross–Pitaevskii equation. We believe that the predicted results in this work can be useful for the future possible experiment of loading a Bose–Einstein condensate of 164Dy atoms with strong magnetic dipole–dipole interaction into an optical lattice.

Sound Wave of Spin–Orbit Coupled Bose–Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattice**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11305132, 11274255 and 11475027, and the Scientific Research Project of Gansu Higher Education under Grant No 2016A-005.

We study the phonon mode excitation of spin–orbit (SO) coupled Bose–Einstein condensates trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice. The sound speed of the system is obtained analytically. Softening of the phonon mode, i.e., the vanishing of sound speed, in the optical lattice is revealed. When the lattice is absent, the softening of phonon mode occurs only at the phase transition point, which is not influenced by the atomic interaction and Raman coupling when the SO coupling is strong. However, when the lattice is present, the softening of phonon modes can take place in a regime near the phase transition point. Particularly, the regime is widened as lattice strength and SO coupling increase or atomic interaction decreases. The suppression of sound speed by the lattice strongly depends on atomic interaction, Raman coupling, and SO coupling. Furthermore, we find that the sound speed in plane wave phase regime and zero-momentum phase regime behaves with very different characteristics as Raman coupling and SO coupling change. In zero-momentum phase regime, sound speed monotonically increases/decreases with Raman coupling/SO coupling, while in plane wave phase regime, sound speed can either increase or decrease with Raman coupling and SO coupling, which depends on atomic interaction.

Self-localization of Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices

Mean field and beyond mean field model calculations of Bose–Einstein condensates trapped in optical lattices have shown that initially homogeneous condensates can evolve into self-trapped, strongly localized states in the presence of weak boundary dissipation, a phenomenon called self-localization. A dynamical phase transition from extended to localized states can be observed when the effective nonlinearity exceeds a critical threshold . We investigate this phase transition to self-localization in the mean field approximation of the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation. We quantitatively characterize the properties of the discrete breathers, i.e. the nonlinear localized solutions, at the phase transition. This leads us to propose and numerically verify an analytical lower bound for the critical nonlinearity based on the idea of self-induced Anderson localization.

Critical point of a rotating Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattice

In this paper, we have considered the critical point (critical atoms’ number and the corresponding critical temperature) of rotating condensate bosons trapped in optical lattices. Our system is formed by loading three dimensional harmonically trapped boson atoms into a 1D (axial direction) or 2D (radial direction) optical lattice. The system subjected to rotating with angular velocity Ω around to the axial direction z-axis. We employ the semiclassical approximation to calculate the critical point. Effects of the optical lattice depth, direction (axial or radial) and the rotation rate on the critical point are investigated using the semiclassical approximation. The calculated results showed that the temperature dependence of the critical point is changed in an optical lattice and depends crucially on the rotation rate. The effect of the finite size for one-dimensional optical lattice case, as required by experiment, is discussed. The outcome results furnish useful qualitatively theoretical results for the future Bose–Einstein condensation experiments in such traps.

Excitation band topology and edge matter waves in Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices

We show that Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices with broken time-reversal symmetry can support chiral edge modes originating from nontrivial bulk excitation band topology. To be specific, we analyze a Bose–Hubbard extension of the Haldane model, which can be realized with recently developed techniques of periodically modulating honeycomb optical lattices. The topological properties of Bloch bands known for the noninteracting case are shown to be smoothly carried over to Bogoliubov excitation bands for the interacting case. We show that the parameter ranges that display topological bands enlarge with increasing the Hubbard interaction or the particle density. In the presence of sharp boundaries, chiral edge modes appear in the gap between topological excitation bands. We demonstrate that by coherently transferring a portion of a condensate into an edge mode, a density wave is formed along the edge owing to an interference with the background condensate. This offers a unique method of detecting an edge mode through a macroscopic quantum phenomenon.

Excitations and management of the nonlinear localized gap modes

We discuss about the theory of nonlinear localized excitations, such as soliton and compactons in the gap of the linear spectrum of the nonlinear systems. We show how the gap originates in the linear spectrum using examples of a few systems, such as nonlinear lattices, Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattice and systems represented by coupled nonlinear evolution equations. We then analytically show the excitation of solitons and compacton-like solutions in the gap of the linear spectrum of a system of coupled Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equations with linear and nonlinear dispersions. Finally, we discuss about the theory of Feshbach resonance management and dispersion management of the soliton solutions.

Antisymmetry breaking of discrete dipole gap solitons induced by a phase-slip defect

In this paper, we study the antisymmetry breaking of discrete dipole soliton induced by a phase-slip one-dimensional discrete lattice, which contains on-site self-repulsive nonlinearity. This system can be realized in waveguide arrays system in optics or Bose–Einstein condensate in optical lattice. Different from the symmetry breaking occurring in the ground-state, antisymmetry breaking occurs in the first excited state, which contains antisymmetry. For this system, stable antisymmetric dipole soliton and anti-asymmetric are found, the symmetry transition between them is supercritical type. It is found that, increasing the total norm of the soliton or decreasing the coupled strength of the defect waveguide can lead to the antisymmetry breaking. Such kind of symmetry breaking can lead to the change of the tendency of some characters of the soliton.

SIGNATURES OF DYNAMICAL INSTABILITY OF BOSE–EINSTEIN CONDENSATES IN 1D OPTICAL LATTICES

The onset of dynamical instabilities of Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices due to the dephasing of the condensate wavefunction is observed through the decay of the visibility of the interference pattern in time-of-flight and the growth of the radial width of the condensate.

Discrete breathers and negative-temperature states

We explore the statistical behaviour of the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation as a test bed for the observation of negative-temperature (i.e. above infinite temperature) states in Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices and arrays of optical waveguides. By monitoring the microcanonical temperature, we show that there exists a parameter region where the system evolves towards a state characterized by a finite density of discrete breathers and a negative temperature. Such a state persists over very long (astronomical) times since the convergence to equilibrium becomes increasingly slower as a consequence of a coarsening process. We also discuss two possible mechanisms for the generation of negative-temperature states in experimental setups, namely, the introduction of boundary dissipations and the free expansion of wavepackets initially in equilibrium at a positive temperature.

A two-parameter continuation algorithm for vortex pinning in rotating Bose–Einstein condensates

We describe an efficient two-parameter continuation algorithm combined with spectral collocation methods for computing the ground state and central vortex state solutions of rotating Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices, where the first kind and second kind Chebyshev polynomials are used as the basis functions for the trial function space. By treating the chemical potential and angular velocity as the continuation parameters simultaneously under the additional constraint of normalization condition, the proposed algorithm can effectively compute numerical solutions for a rich variety of physical phenomena observed in physical experiments with very little cost. Comparisons with various numerical methods on some sample test problems are reported.

Bose—Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices with Higher-Order Interactions

The higher-order interactions of Bose-Einstein condensate in multi-dimensional optical lattices are discussed both analytically and numerically. It is demonstrated that the effects of the higher-order atomic interactions on the sound speed and the stabilities of Bloch waves strongly depend on the lattice strength. In the presence of higher-order effects, tighter and high-dimensional lattices are confirmed to be two positive factors for maintaining the system's energetic stability, and the dynamical instability of Bloch waves can take place simultaneously with the energetic instability. In addition, we find that the higher-order interactions exhibit a long-range behavior and the long-lived coherent Bloch oscillations in a tilted optical lattice exist. Our results provide an effective way to probe the higher-order interactions in optical lattices.

Effects of spatially inhomogeneous atomic interactions on Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices

An interplay of optical lattices and nonlinear impurities in controlling the dynamics of Bose–Einstein condensate bright solitons is investigated using an effective potential approach. The ability of pushing the solitons into or away from the impurity region by changing both lattice and impurity parameters is suggested. A possibility for the existence of stable fundamental gap solitons, which appear to satisfy an inverted Vakhitov–Kolokolov criterion, is examined.

Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices: Mathematical analysis and analytical approximate formulae

We show that the GPE with cubic nonlinearity, as a model for describing the one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensates loaded into a harmonically confined optical lattice, presents a set of ground states which is orbitally stable for any value of the self-interaction (attractive and repulsive) parameter and laser intensity. We also derive a new formalism which gives explicit expressions for the minimum energy Emin and the associated chemical potential μ0. On the basis of these formulae, we generalize the variational method to obtain approximate solutions, at any order of approximation, for Emin, μ0 and the ground state.

High-fidelity quantum driving

Accurately controlling a quantum system is a fundamental requirement in quantum information processing and the coherent manipulation of molecular systems. The ultimate goal in quantum control is to prepare a desired state with the highest fidelity allowed by the available resources and the experimental constraints. Here we experimentally implement two optimal high-fidelity control protocols using a two-level quantum system comprising Bose–Einstein condensates in optical lattices. The first is a short-cut protocol that reaches the maximum quantum-transformation speed compatible with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In the opposite limit, we realize the recently proposed transitionless superadiabatic protocols in which the system follows the instantaneous adiabatic ground state nearly perfectly. We demonstrate that superadiabatic protocols are extremely robust against control parameter variations, making them useful for practical applications. Transforming a quantum system with high fidelity is usually a trade-off between an increase in speed—thereby minimizing decoherence—and robustness against fluctuating control parameters. Protocols at these two extreme limits are now demonstrated and compared using Bose–Einstein condensates in optical traps.