Ultracold Polar Molecules Research Articles

Phase separation induced by density-spin interaction in one-dimensional extended t-J model

t-J model is one of important theoretical models in the study of high temperature superconductivity. Recent cold molecule experiments indicate that t-J model can be simulated by ultracold polar molecules. In the simulated t-J model, besides long-range dipolar interaction, density-spin interaction has also been introduced. In the present we study the effect of density-spin interaction in the one-dimensional extended t-J model by using the density matrix renormalization group method. We choose three sets of representative parameters, which correspond to three different phases in the ground state phase diagram of t-J model, to calculate the charge and spin density distribution in real space and the structure factor of density-density and spin-spin correlation functions. The results indicate that the nature of the system will not change if the intensity of the density-spin interaction is small, however if the intensity is large enough, the system enters the phase separation, in which the character is quiet different form that of the phase separation in the traditional t-J model.

Many-Body Localization in Dipolar Systems

Systems of strongly interacting dipoles offer an attractive platform to study many-body localized phases, owing to their long coherence times and strong interactions. We explore conditions under which such localized phases persist in the presence of power-law interactions and supplement our analytic treatment with numerical evidence of localized states in one dimension. We propose and analyze several experimental systems that can be used to observe and probe such states, including ultracold polar molecules and solid-state magnetic spin impurities.

Two-dimensional Bose gas of tilted dipoles: Roton instability and condensate depletion

We predict the effect of the roton instability for a two-dimensional weakly interacting gas of tilted dipoles in a single homogeneous quantum layer. Being typical for strongly correlated systems, the roton phenomena appear to occur in a weakly interacting gas. It is important that in contrast to a system of normal to the layer dipoles, breaking of the rotational symmetry for a system of tilted dipoles leads to the convergence of the condensate depletion even up to the threshold of the roton instability, with mean-field approach being valid. Predicted effects can be observed in a wide class of dipolar systems. We suggest observing predicted phenomena for systems of ultracold atoms and polar molecules in optical lattices, and estimate optimal experimental parameters.

Diverse solid and supersolid phases of bosons in a triangular lattice

We investigate the ground state of bosons with long-range interactions in the large U limit on a triangular lattice. By mapping this system to the spin-1/2 XXZ model in a magnetic field, we can apply the spin wave theory to this study. We demonstrate how to construct the phase diagrams within the spin wave theory. The phase diagrams are given in an extensive parameter region, where, besides the superfluid phase, diverse solid and supersolid phases are shown to exist in this model. Especially, we find that the phase diagram obtained in this method is consistent with the one obtained previously using numerical techniques in the Ising limit. This confirms the effectiveness of our method. We analyze the stability of all the obtained supersolids and show that they will not be ruined by the quantum fluctuations. We observe that the quantum fluctuations in the stripe supersolid phase could be enhanced by the external field. We also discuss the relevance of our result with the experiment that may be realized with ultracold bosonic polar molecules in a triangular optical lattice.

Continuous formation of vibronic ground state RbCs molecules via photoassociation

We demonstrate the direct formation of vibronic ground state RbCs molecules by photoassociation of ultracold atoms followed by radiative stabilization. The photoassociation proceeds through deeply bound levels of the (2)3Π0+ state. From analysis of the relevant free-to-bound and bound-to-bound Franck–Condon factors, we have predicted and experimentally verified a set of photoassociation resonances that lead to efficient creation of molecules in the v = 0 vibrational level of the X1Σ+ electronic ground state. We also compare the observed and calculated laser intensity required to saturate the photoassociation rate. We discuss the prospects for using short-range photoassociation to create and accumulate samples of ultracold polar molecules in their rovibronic ground state.

From Classical to Quantum Glasses with Ultracold Polar Molecules

We study the dynamics of a bilayer system of ultracold polar molecules, which exhibits classical and quantum glassy behavior, characterized by long tails in the relaxation time and dynamical heterogeneity. In the proposed setup, quantum fluctuations are of the order of thermal fluctuations and the degree of frustration can be tuned by the interlayer distance. We discuss the possible observation of a glassy anomalous diffusion and dynamical heterogeneity in experiment using internal degrees of freedom of the molecules in combination with optical detection.

Long-range interactions between polar alkali-metal diatoms in external electric fields

We computed the long-range interactions between two identical polar bialkali molecules in their rovibronic ground level, for all ten species involving Li, Na, K, Rb and Cs, using accurate quantum chemistry results combined with available spectroscopic data. Huge van der Waals interaction is found for eight species in free space. The competition of the van der Waals interaction with the dipole-dipole interaction induced by an external electric field parallel or perpendicular to the intermolecular axis is investigated by varying the electric field magnitude and the intermolecular distance. Our calculations predict a regime with the mutual orientation of the two molecules but with no preferential direction in the laboratory frame. A mechanism for the stimulated one-photon radiative association of a pair of ultracold polar molecules into ultracold tetramers is proposed, which would open the way towards the optical manipulation of ultracold polyatomic molecules.

Self-bound many-body states of quasi-one-dimensional dipolar Fermi gases: Exploiting Bose-Fermi mappings for generalized contact interactions

Using a combination of results from exact mappings and from mean-field theory we explore the phase diagram of quasi-one-dimensional systems of identical fermions with attractive dipolar interactions. We demonstrate that at low density these systems provide a realization of a single-component one-dimensional Fermi gas with a generalized contact interaction. Using an exact duality between one-dimensional Fermi and Bose gases, we show that when the dipole moment is strong enough, bound many-body states exist, and we calculate the critical coupling strength for the emergence of these states. At higher densities, the Hartree-Fock approximation is accurate, and by combining the two approaches we determine the structure of the phase diagram. The many-body bound states should be accessible in future experiments with ultracold polar molecules.

Photoassociation of ultracold RbCs molecules into the (2)0− state (v = 189, 190) below the 5S1/2 + 6P1/2 dissociation limit

Ultracold polar RbCs molecules are produced via photoassociation in a laser-cooled mixture of 85Rb and 133Cs atoms. The a3Σ+ state molecules which decay from electronically excited (2)0− state RbCs molecules are detected by resonance-enhanced two-photon ionization. The new rovibrational levels (v = 189, 190) in the (2)0− state are also observed, which exist in theory and have not been observed in experiments yet. The corresponding rotational constants are measured by photoassociation spectroscopy, which are consistent with theoretical calculations using a nonrigid rotor model.

Molecular Hubbard Hamiltonian: Field regimes and molecular species

The molecular Hubbard Hamiltonian (MHH) naturally arises for ultracold ground-state polar alkali-metal dimer molecules in optical lattices. We show that, unlike ultracold atoms, different molecules display different many-body phases due to intrinsic variances in molecular structure even when the molecular symmetry is the same. We also demonstrate a wide variety of experimental controls on ${}^{1}\ensuremath{\Sigma}$ molecules via external fields, including applied static electric and magnetic fields, an ac microwave field, and the polarization and strength of optical lattice beams. We provide explicit numerical calculations of the parameters of the MHH, including tunneling and direct and exchange dipole-dipole interaction energies, for the molecules ${}^{6}$Li${}^{133}$Cs, ${}^{23}$Na${}^{40}$K, ${}^{87}$Rb${}^{133}$Cs, ${}^{40}$K${}^{87}$Rb, and ${}^{6}$Li${}^{23}$Na in weak and strong applied electric fields. As case studies of many-body physics, we use infinite-size matrix product state methods to explore the quantum phase transitions from the superfluid phase to half-filled and third-filled crystalline phases in one dimension.

Multichannel modeling and two-photon coherent transfer paths in NaK

We explore possible pathways for the creation of ultracold polar NaK molecules in their absolute electronic and rovibrational ground state starting from ultracold Feshbach molecules. In particular, we present a multi-channel analysis of the electronic ground and K(4p)+Na(3s) excited state manifold of NaK, analyze the spin character of both the Feshbach molecular state and the electronically excited intermediate states and discuss possible coherent two-photon transfer paths from Feshbach molecules to rovibronic ground state molecules. The theoretical study is complemented by the demonstration of STIRAP transfer from the X^1\Sigma^+ (v=0) state to the a^3\Sigma^+ manifold on a molecular beam experiment.

Study of dipole moments of LiSr and KRb molecules by quantum Monte Carlo methods

Heteronuclear dimers are of significant interest to experiments seeking to exploit ultracold polar molecules in a number of novel ways, including precision measurement, quantum computing and quantum simulation. We calculate highly accurate Born–Oppenheimer total energies and electric dipole moments as a function of internuclear separation for two such dimers, LiSr and KRb. We apply fully correlated, high-accuracy quantum Monte Carlo methods for evaluating these molecular properties in a many-body framework. We use small-core effective potentials combined with multi-reference Slater–Jastrow trial wave functions to provide accurate nodes for the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method. For reference and comparison, we calculate the same properties with Hartree–Fock and with restricted Configuration Interaction methods, and carefully assess the impact of the recovered many-body correlations on the calculated quantities. For LiSr, we find a highly non-linear dipole moment curve, which may make this molecule’s dipole moment tunable through vibrational state control.

External field control of spin-dependent rotational decoherence of ultracold polar molecules

We determine trapping conditions for ultracold polar molecules, where pairs of internal states experience identical trapping potentials. Such conditions could ensure that detrimental effects of inevitable inhomogeneities across an ultracold sample are significantly reduced. In particular, we investigate the internal rovibronic and hyperfine quantum states of ultracold fermionic ground-state 40K87Rb polar molecules, when static magnetic, static electric and trapping laser fields are simultaneously applied. Understanding the effect of changing the relative orientation or polarisation of these three fields is of crucial importance for the creation of decoherence-free subspaces built from two or more rovibronic states. Moreover, we evaluate the induced dipole moment of the molecule in the presence of these fields, which will allow control of interactions between molecules in different sites of an optical lattice, and study the influence of the interaction anisotropy on the ability to entangle polar molecules.

Quantum simulation of many-body spin interactions with ultracold polar molecules

We present an architecture for the quantum simulation of many-body spin interactions based on ultracold polar molecules trapped in optical lattices. Our approach employs digital quantum simulation, i.e. the dynamics of the simulated system is reproduced by the quantum simulator in a stroboscopic pattern, and allows to simulate both coherent and dissipative dynamics. We discuss the realisation of Kitaev’s toric code Hamiltonian, a paradigmatic model involving four-body interactions, and analyse the requirements for an experimental implementation.

Kitaev honeycomb and other exotic spin models with polar molecules

We show that ultracold polar molecules pinned in an optical lattice can be used to access a variety of exotic spin models, including the Kitaev honeycomb model. Treating each molecule as a rigid rotor, we use DC electric and microwave fields to define superpositions of rotational levels as effective spin degrees of freedom, while dipole–dipole interactions give rise to interactions between the spins. In particular, we show that, with sufficient microwave control, the interaction between two spins can be written as a sum of five independently controllable Hamiltonian terms proportional to the five rank-2 spherical harmonics Y 2, q (θ, φ), where (θ, φ) are the spherical coordinates of the vector connecting the two molecules. To demonstrate the potential of this approach beyond the simplest examples studied in [S.R. Manmana et al., Phys. Rev. B. 87, 081106 (2013)], we focus on the realisation of the Kitaev honeycomb model, which can support exotic non-Abelian anyonic excitations. We also discuss the possibility of generating spin Hamiltonians with arbitrary spin S, including those exhibiting SU(N=2S+1) symmetry.

Realizing Fractional Chern Insulators in Dipolar Spin Systems

Strongly correlated quantum systems can exhibit exotic behavior controlled by topology. We predict that the ν = 1/2 fractional Chern insulator arises naturally in a two-dimensional array of driven, dipolar-interacting spins. As a specific implementation, we analyze how to prepare and detect synthetic gauge potentials for the rotational excitations of ultracold polar molecules trapped in a deep optical lattice. With the motion of the molecules pinned, under certain conditions, these rotational excitations form a fractional Chern insulating state. We present a detailed experimental blueprint for its realization and demonstrate that the implementation is consistent with near-term capabilities. Prospects for the realization of such phases in solid-state dipolar systems are discussed as are their possible applications.

Van der Waals coefficients for systems with ultracold polar alkali-metal molecules

A systematic study of the leading isotropic van der Waals coefficients for the alkali-metal atom + molecule and molecule + molecule systems is presented. Dipole moments and static and dynamic dipole polarizabilities are calculated employing high-level quantum chemistry calculations. The dispersion, induction, and rotational parts of the isotropic van der Waals coefficient are evaluated. The known van der Waals coefficients are then used to derive characteristics essential for simple models of the collisions involving the corresponding ultracold polar molecules.

Far-from-equilibrium quantum magnetism with ultracold polar molecules.

Recent theory has indicated how to emulate tunable models of quantum magnetism with ultracold polar molecules. Here we show that present molecule optical lattice experiments can accomplish three crucial goals for quantum emulation, despite currently being well below unit filling and not quantum degenerate. The first is to verify and benchmark the models proposed to describe these systems. The second is to prepare correlated and possibly useful states in well-understood regimes. The third is to explore many-body physics inaccessible to existing theoretical techniques. Our proposal relies on a nonequilibrium protocol that can be viewed either as Ramsey spectroscopy or an interaction quench. The proposal uses only routine experimental tools available in any ultracold molecule experiment. To obtain a global understanding of the behavior, we treat short times pertubatively, develop analytic techniques to treat the Ising interaction limit, and apply a time-dependent density matrix renormalization group to disordered systems with long range interactions.

Impact of decoherence on internal state cooling using optical frequency combs

We discuss femtosecond Raman type techniques to control molecular vibrations, which can be implemented for internal state cooling from Feshbach states with the use of optical frequency combs with and without modulation. The technique makes use of multiple two-photon resonances induced by optical frequencies present in the comb. It provides us with a useful tool to study the details of molecular dynamics at ultracold temperatures. In our theoretical model we take into account decoherence in the form of spontaneous emission and collisional dephasing in order to ascertain an accurate model of the population transfer in the three-level system. We analyze the effects of odd and even chirps of the optical frequency comb in the form of sine and cosine functions on the population transfer. We compare the effects of these chirps to the results attained with the standard optical frequency comb to see if they increase the population transfer to the final deeply bound state in the presence of decoherence. We also analyze the inherent phase relation that takes place owing to collisional dephasing between molecules in each of the states. This ability to control the rovibrational states of a molecule with an optical frequency comb enables us to create a deeply bound ultracold polar molecules from the Feshbach state.

Feshbach spectroscopy of an ultracold mixture of85Rb and133Cs

We report the observation of interspecies Feshbach resonances in an optically trapped mixture of ${}^{85}$Rb and ${}^{133}$Cs. We measure nine resonances in the lowest spin channel for a magnetic field range from 0 to 700 G and show that they are in good agreement with coupled-channel calculations. The interspecies background scattering length is close to zero over a large range of magnetic fields, permitting the sensitive detection of Feshbach resonances through interspecies thermalization. Our results confirm the quality of the Rb-Cs potential curves [Phys. Rev. A 85, 032506 (2012)] and offer promising starting points for the production of ultracold polar molecules.