Harmonic Trap Research Articles

Particle scattering by rotating trapped quantum gases at finite temperature

We have analytically explored the quantum phenomena of particle scattering by rotating trapped quantum gases of electrically neutral bosons and fermions for the short-ranged Fermi-Huang interactions between the incident particle and the scatterers. We have predicted differential scattering cross-sections and their temperature and angular velocity dependencies in this regard, in particular, for an ideal Bose gas in a rotating harmonic trap, an ideal Fermi gas in a rotating harmonic trap, and a weakly interacting Bose gas in a slow rotating harmonic trap. We have theoretically probed the lattice-pattern of the vortices in a rapidly rotating strongly interacting Bose–Einstein condensate by the particle scattering method. We also have obtained de Haas-van Alphen-like oscillations in the differential scattering cross-section for an ideal ultracold Fermi gas in a rotating harmonic trap. Our predictions on the differential scattering cross-sections can be tested within the present-day experimental setups.

Vortex lattice in spin-imbalanced unitary Fermi gas

We investigate the properties of a spin-imbalanced and rotating unitary Fermi gas. Using a density functional theory (DFT), we provide insight into states that emerge as a result of a competition between Abrikosov lattice formation, spatial phase separation and the emergence of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state. A confrontation of the experimental data [M. Zwierlein et al., Science 311, 492 (2006)] with theoretical predictions provides a remarkable qualitative agreement. In case of gas confined in a harmonic trap, the phase separation into a superfluid core populated by the Abrikosov lattice and a spin-polarized corona is the dominant process. Changing confinement to a box-like trap, reverts the spatial location of the component: gas being in the normal state is surrounded by superfluid threaded by quantum vortices. The vortex lattice no longer exhibits the triangular symmetry, and emergence of exotic geometries may be an indirect signature of the FFLO-like state formation in the system.

Formation and quench of homonuclear and heteronuclear quantum droplets in one dimension

We exemplify the impact of beyond Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) physics, especially due to intercomponent correlations, in the ground state and the quench dynamics of one-dimensional so-called quantum droplets using an ab-initio nonperturbative approach. It is found that the droplet Gaussian-shaped configuration arising for intercomponent attractive couplings becomes narrower for stronger intracomponent repulsion and transits towards a flat-top structure either for larger particle numbers or weaker intercomponent attraction. Additionally, a harmonic trap prevents the flat-top formation. At the balance point where mean-field interactions cancel out, we show that a correlation hole is present in the few particle limit of these fluids as well as for flat-top droplets. Introducing mass-imbalance, droplets experience intercomponent mixing and excitation signatures are identified for larger masses. Monitoring the droplet expansion (breathing motion) upon considering interaction quenches to stronger (weaker) attractions we explicate that beyond LHY correlations result in a reduced velocity (breathing frequency). Strikingly, the droplets feature two-body anti-correlations (correlations) at the same position (longer distances). Our findings pave the way for probing correlation-induced phenomena of droplet dynamics in current ultracold atom experiments.

Influence of Rashba spin–orbit and Rabi couplings on the spin-mixing and ground state phases of binary Bose–Einstein condensates

We study the miscibility properties and ground state phases of two-component spin–orbit (SO) coupled Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) in a harmonic trap with strong axial confinement. By numerically solving the coupled Gross–Pitaevskii equations in the two-dimensional setting, we analyze the SO-coupled BECs for two possible permutations of the intra- and interspecies interactions, namely (i) weak intra- and weak interspecies interactions (W–W) and (ii) weak intra- and strong interspecies interactions (W–S). Considering the density overlap integral as a miscibility order parameter, we investigate the miscible–immiscible transition by varying the coupling parameters. We obtain various ground state phases, including plane wave, half quantum vortex, elongated plane wave, and different stripe wave patterns for W–W interactions. For finite Rabi coupling, an increase in SO coupling strength leads to the transition from the fully miscible to the partially miscible state. We also characterize different ground states in the coupling parameter space using the root mean square sizes of the condensate. The spin density vector for the ground state phases exhibits density, quadrupole and dipole like spin polarizations. For the W–S interaction, in addition to that observed in the W–W case, we witness semi vortex, mixed mode, and shell-like immiscible phases. We notice a wide variety of spin polarizations, such as density, dipole, quadrupole, symbiotic, necklace, and stripe-like patterns for the W–S case. A detailed investigation in the coupling parameter space indicates immiscible to miscible state phase transition upon varying the Rabi coupling for a fixed Rashba SO coupling. The critical Rabi coupling for the immiscible–miscible phase transition decreases upon increasing the SO coupling strength.

Ideal-Gas Approach to Hydrodynamics

Transport is one of the most important physical processes in all energy and length scales. Ideal gases and hydrodynamics are, respectively, two opposite limits of transport. Here, we present an unexpected mathematical connection between these two limits; that is, there exist situations that the solution to a class of interacting hydrodynamic equations with certain initial conditions can be exactly constructed from the dynamics of noninteracting ideal gases. We analytically provide three such examples. The first two examples focus on scale-invariant systems, which generalize fermionization to the hydrodynamics of strongly interacting systems, and determine specific initial conditions for perfect density oscillations in a harmonic trap. The third example recovers the dark soliton solution in a one-dimensional Bose condensate. The results can explain a recent puzzling experimental observation in ultracold atomic gases by the Paris group and make further predictions for future experiments. We envision that extensive examples of such an ideal-gas approach to hydrodynamics can be found by systematical numerical search, which can find broad applications in different problems in various subfields of physics.

Statistical properties of the momentum occupation numbers of the Tonks-Girardeau gas in a harmonic trap

We compute the fluctuations of the number of bosons with a given momentum for the Tonks-Girardeau gas at zero and finite temperature in a harmonic trap. We show that correlations between opposite momentum states $p$, which is an important fingerprint of long range order in weakly interacting Bose systems are suppressed. Non trivial correlations, including negative correlations are observed for momenta smaller or of the order of the inverse radius of the gas. The full distribution of the number of bosons with momentum $p$ exhibits an interesting crossover from a non trivial distribution at zero momentum to an exponential distribution. The distribution of the quasi-condensate occupation is also studied. Experimental relevance of our findings for recent cold atoms experiments are discussed.

Quasiparticle kinetic theory for Calogero models

We show that the quasiparticle kinetic theory for quantum and classical Calogero models reduces to the free-streaming Boltzmann equation. We reconcile this simple emergent behaviour with the strongly interacting character of the model by developing a Bethe–Lax correspondence in the classical case. This demonstrates explicitly that the freely propagating degrees of freedom are not bare particles, but rather quasiparticles corresponding to eigenvectors of the Lax matrix. We apply the resulting kinetic theory to classical Calogero particles in external trapping potentials and find excellent agreement with numerical simulations in all cases, both for harmonic traps that preserve integrability and exhibit perfect revivals, and for anharmonic traps that break microscopic integrability. Our framework also yields a simple description of multi-soliton solutions in a harmonic trap, with solitons corresponding to sharp peaks in the quasiparticle density. Extensions to quantum systems of Calogero particles are discussed.

Pauli crystals in harmonic trap and on a sphere

We study configurations maximizing N-particle probability distributions of non-interacting particles obeying Fermi statistics as discussed in [1]. We consider two different types of particles' confinement: (i) trapping in a harmonic potential and (ii) constraining to the surface of a sphere. In such settings the most probable arrangements of particles correspond to characteristic geometric patterns resulting from the combined effect of confinement and the Pauli exclusion principle. We discuss the geometry of these optimal configurations as well as two different methods of extracting these shapes from a number of single shot pictures of the system. The post-selection method which does not assume a priori any information on the optimal configurations is illustrated in detail.

Bogoliubov theory of a Bose–Einstein condensate of rigid rotor molecules

We consider a BEC of rigid rotor molecules confined to quasi-2D through harmonic trapping. The molecules are subjected to an external electric field which polarizes the gas, and the molecules interact via dipole–dipole interactions. We present a description of the ground state and low-energy excitations of the system including an analysis of the mean-field energy, polarization, and stability. Under large electric fields the gas becomes fully polarized and we reproduce a well known density-wave instability which arises in polar BECs. Under smaller applied electric fields the gas develops an in-plane polarization leading to the emergence of a new global instability as the molecules ‘tilt’. The character of these instabilities is clarified by means of momentum-space density–density structure factors. A peak at zero momentum in the spin–spin structure factor for the in-plane component of the polarization indicates that the tilt instability is a global phonon-like instability.

Propagation of phase-imprinted solitons from superfluid core to Mott-insulator shell and superfluid shell

We study phase-imprinted solitons of ultracold bosons in an optical lattice with a harmonic trap, which shows the superfluid (SF) and Mott-insulator (MI) shell structures. The earlier study [Konstantin V. Krutitsky, J. Larson, and M. Lewenstein, Phys. Rev. A 82, 033618 (2010).] reported three types of phase-imprinted solitons in the Bose-Hubbard model: in-phase soliton, out-of-phase soliton, and wavelet. In this paper, we uncover the dynamical phase diagram of these phase-imprinted solitons, and find another type of the phase-imprinted soliton namely, the hybrid soliton. In the harmonically trapped system, the solitonic excitations created at the SF core cannot penetrate into the outer SF shell. This repulsion at the surface of the outer SF shell can be cured by inposing a repulsive potential at the center of the trap. These results can be interpreted as a kind of the impedance matching of excitations in BECs in terms of the effective chemical potentials or the local particle numbers in the shell, and the analogous results can be observed also in the sound wave created by the local single-shot pulse potential.

Few- to many-vortex states of density-angular-momentum–coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Motivated by recent experiments, we theoretically study a gas of atomic bosons confined in an elliptical harmonic trap; forming a quasi-two-dimensional atomic Bose-Einstein condensate subject to a density-dependent gauge potential which realises an effective density-angular-momentum coupling. We present exact Thomas-Fermi solutions which allows us to identify the stable regimes of the full parameter space of the model. Accompanying numerical simulations reveal the effect of the interplay of the rigid body and density-angular-momentum coupling for the elliptically confined condensate. By varying the strength of the gauge potential and trap anisotropy we explore how the superfluid state emerges in different experimentally accessible geometries, while for large rotation strengths dense vortex lattices and concentric vortex ring arrangements are obtained.

First-order Bose-Einstein condensation with three-body interacting bosons

Bose-Einstein condensation, observed in either strongly interacting liquid helium or weakly interacting atomic Bose gases, is widely known to be a second-order phase transition. Here, we predict a first-order Bose-Einstein condensation in a cloud of harmonically trapped bosons interacting with both attractive two-body interaction and repulsive three-body interaction, characterized respectively by an $s$-wave scattering length $a<0$ and a three-body scattering hypervolume $D>0$. It happens when the harmonic trapping potential is weak, so with increasing temperature the system changes from a low-temperature liquid-like quantum droplet to a normal gas, and therefore experiences a first-order liquid-to-gas transition. At large trapping potential, however, the quantum droplet can first turn into a superfluid gas, rendering the condensation transition occurred later from a superfluid gas to a normal gas smooth. We determine a rich phase diagram and show the existence of a tri-critical point, where the three phases - quantum droplet, superfluid gas and normal gas - meet together. We argue that an ensemble of spin-polarized tritium atoms could be a promising candidate to observe the predicted first-order Bose-Einstein condensation, across which the condensate fraction or central condensate density jumps to zero and the surface-mode frequencies diverge.

Orbital magnetism of an active particle in viscoelastic suspension.

We consider an active (self-propelling) particle in a viscoelastic fluid. The particle is charged and constrained to move in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. Its dynamics is coupled to a constant magnetic field applied perpendicular to its plane of motion via Lorentz force. Due to the finite activity, the generalized fluctuation-dissipation relation (GFDR) breaks down, driving the system away from equilibrium. While breaking GFDR, we have shown that the system can have finite classical orbital magnetism only when the dynamics of the system contains finite inertia. The orbital magnetic moment has been calculated exactly. Remarkably, we find that when the elastic dissipation timescale of the medium is larger (smaller) than the persistence timescale of the self-propelling particle, it is diamagnetic (paramagnetic). Therefore, for a given strength of the magnetic field, the system undergoes a transition from diamagnetic to paramagnetic state (and vice versa) simply by tuning the timescales of underlying physical processes, such as active fluctuations and viscoelastic dissipation. Interestingly, we also find that the magnetic moment, which vanishes at equilibrium, behaves nonmonotonically with respect to increasing persistence of self-propulsion, which drives the system out of equilibrium.

Kovacs Memory Effect with an Optically Levitated Nanoparticle.

The understanding of the dynamics of nonequilibrium cooling and heating processes at the nanoscale is still an open problem. These processes can follow surprising relaxation paths due to, e.g., memory effects, which significantly alter the expected equilibration routes. The Kovacs effect can take place when a thermalization process is suddenly interrupted by a change of the bath temperature, leading to a nonmonotonic evolution of the energy of the system. Here, we demonstrate that the Kovacs effect can be observed in the thermalization of the center of mass motion of a levitated nanoparticle. The temperature is controlled during the experiment through an external source of white Gaussian noise that mimics an effective thermal bath at a temperature that can be changed faster than any relaxation time of the system. We describe our experiments in terms of the dynamics of a Brownian particle in a harmonic trap without any fitting parameter, suggesting that the Kovacs effect can appear in a large variety of systems.

Delta-kick cooling, time-optimal control of scale-invariant dynamics, and shortcuts to adiabaticity assisted by kicks

Delta kick cooling (DKC) is used to compress the momentum distribution of ultracold quantum matter. It combines expansion dynamics with the use of kick pulses, designed via classical methods, that bring the system to rest. We introduce an exact approach to DKC for arbitrary scale-invariant dynamics of quantum gases, lifting the original restrictions to free evolution and noninteracting systems, to account for the control of atomic clouds in a time-dependent harmonic trap that can be either repulsive (inverted) or confining. We show that DKC assisted by a repulsive potential outperforms the conventional scheme, and that sudden trap-frequency quenches combined with DKC are equivalent to time-optimal bang-bang protocols. We further show that reverse engineering of the scale-invariant dynamics under smooth trap-frequency modulations can be combined with DKC to introduce a new class of shortcuts to adiabaticity assisted by kicks.

Shortcuts to adiabatic rotation of a two-ion chain

We inverse engineer fast rotations of a transversally tight, linear trap with two ions for a predetermined rotation angle and time, avoiding final excitation. Different approaches are analyzed and compared when the ions are of the same species or of different species. The separability into dynamical normal modes for equal ions in a harmonic trap, or for different ions in non-harmonic traps with up to quartic terms allows for simpler computations of the rotation protocols. For non-separable scenarios, in particular for different ions in harmonic traps, rotation protocols are also found using more costly numerical optimisations.

Benchmarking the multiconfigurational Hartree method by the exact wavefunction of two harmonically trapped bosons with contact interaction

We consider two bosons in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, interacting by a contact potential, and compare the exact solution of this problem to a self-consistent numerical solution by using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method. We thereby benchmark the predictions of the MCTDH method with a few-body problem that has an analytical solution for the most commonly experimentally realized interaction potential in ultracold quantum gases. It is found that exact ground state energy and first order correlations are accurately reproduced by MCTDH up to the intermediate dimensionless coupling strengths corresponding to typical background scattering lengths of magnetically trapped ultracold dilute Bose gases. For larger couplings, established for example by (a combination of) Feshbach resonances and optical trapping, the MCTDH approach overestimates the depth of the trap-induced correlation dip of first order correlations in position space, as well as overestimates the fragmentation, defined as the average relative occupation of orbitals other than the energetically lowest one. We anticipate that qualitatively similar features in the correlation function may arise for larger particle numbers, paving the way for a quantitative assessment of the accuracy of MCTDH by experiments with ultracold atoms.

Study of Zero Temperature Ground State Properties of the Repulsive Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Anharmonic Trap

The zero-temperature ground state properties of experimental 87Rb condensate are studied in a harmonic plus quartic trap [ V(r) = ½mω2r2 + λr4 ]. The anharmonic parameter (λ) is slowly tuned from harmonic to anharmonic. For each choice of λ, the many-particle Schrödinger equation is solved using the potential harmonic expansion method and determines the lowest effective many-body potential. We utilize the correlated two-body basis function, which keeps all possible two-body correlations. The use of van der Waals interaction gives realistic pictures. We calculate kinetic energy, trapping potential energy, interaction energy, and total ground state energy of the condensate in this confining potential, modelled experimentally. The motivation of the present study is to investigate the crucial dependency of the properties of an interacting quantum many-body system on λ. The average size of the condensate has also been calculated to observe how the stability of repulsive condensate depends on anharmonicity. In particular, our calculation presents a clear physical picture of the repulsive condensate in an anharmonic trap.

Two distinguishable fermions entanglement generation and fermionization

We propose a procedure for entanglement generation which could be implemented in current experiments performed with two distinguishable interacting fermions confined in a 1D harmonic trap [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 , 075303 (2012)]. Our results indicate that entangled states could be obtained by preparing a non-interacting non-entangled product state of the trap and then properly controlling the scattering length by means of the magnetic field. Entanglement could be generated when the prepared non-entangled initial state undergoes a turn on and off interaction procedure in which the state is brought into the interacting regime and then back to the absence of interaction point. Entanglement could also be generated when reaching the strongly repulsive regime by tuning the scattering length near the confinement-induced resonance (CIR), i.e. when the two distinguishable fermions are fermionized. We give exact upper bounds for the entanglement and show that maximally entangled states could be produced. Moreover, our results suggest that the maximum entanglement could be reached by repeatedly turning on and off the interaction or by repeatedly crossing the CIR, being the latter the most convenient procedure because it ensures the obtention of maximally entangled states with a higher probability. The turn on and off procedure, the fermionization of the states, and the CIR crossing constitute three basic experimentally realizable main steps upon which several paths for entanglement generation could be diagrammed. • Entanglement generation in a two distinguishable interacting fermion system. • Entangled states are obtained tuning the interaction strength with a magnetic field. • Entanglement could be generated with three basic experimental main steps. • Several paths for entanglement generation could be diagrammed. • Maximum entanglement could be generated by repeatedly crossing the resonance.

Collective dipole oscillations in a bosonic ladder lattice with effective magnetic flux

In this work we study the model of flux lattice, specifically a two-leg Bose–Hubbard ladder lattice subject to effective magnetic flux, which can be implemented using spin–orbit coupled cold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. This model has attracted much recent research interest due to that it provides a platform to study the interplay between artificial gauge fields and interactions. We consider that collective dipole oscillations are activated in this model via quenching an external harmonic trapping potential and show that this system can exhibit unique dynamical behaviors in terms that oscillation amplitude and period critically dependent on the spin–orbit coupling. A dynamical slowing down in collective dipole oscillations will take place near the transition point between the Meissner superfuild and vortex superfluid phases, which agrees quantitatively with a variational analysis. We show that such a quantum phase transition can also be probed via the damping of the collective dipole oscillation. When the quenching displacement is large, the collective center-of-mass motion behaves as damped oscillation and the damping reaches its maximum near the phase transition point. The specific dynamical phenomena are explained with eigenspectra and level populations after the quenching. In the presence of interactions, the time-dependent density–matrix renormalization group (tDMRG) method is hired to study the collective dynamics. The case with weak interactions is similar to that without interactions, except that interactions tend to enhance damping. In addition to that, Bragg reflection can be observed when the quenching displacement exceeds a critical value. The case with strong interactions is also studied, in which case the phase transition points will be dramatically changed and the system can even move into the Mott insulator phase, which will greatly affect the corresponding collective dynamics. The phenomena predicted in this work can be readily observed in current available experiments on atom flux lattices.