Mott-insulator transition in a two-dimensional atomic Bose gas

Gaussian potentials facilitate access to quantum Hall states in rotating Bose gases

Through exact numerical diagonalization for small numbers of atoms, we show that it is possible to access quantum Hall states in harmonically confined Bose gases at rotation frequencies well below the centrifugal limit by applying a repulsive Gaussian potential at the trap center. The main idea is to reduce or eliminate the effective trapping frequency in regions where the particle density is appreciable. The critical rotation frequency required to obtain the bosonic Laughlin state can be fixed at an experimentally accessible value by choosing an applied Gaussian whose amplitude increases linearly with the number of atoms while its width increases as the square root.

Direct observation of second-order atom tunnelling

Tunnelling of material particles through a classically impenetrable barrier constitutes one of the hallmark effects of quantum physics. When interactions between the particles compete with their mobility through a tunnel junction, intriguing dynamical behaviour can arise because the particles do not tunnel independently. In single-electron or Bloch transistors, for example, the tunnelling of an electron or Cooper pair can be enabled or suppressed by the presence of a second charge carrier due to Coulomb blockade. Here we report direct, time-resolved observations of the correlated tunnelling of two interacting ultracold atoms through a barrier in a double-well potential. For the regime in which the interactions between the atoms are weak and tunnel coupling dominates, individual atoms can tunnel independently, similar to the case of a normal Josephson junction. However, when strong repulsive interactions are present, two atoms located on one side of the barrier cannot separate, but are observed to tunnel together as a pair in a second-order co-tunnelling process. By recording both the atom position and phase coherence over time, we fully characterize the tunnelling process for a single atom as well as the correlated dynamics of a pair of atoms for weak and strong interactions. In addition, we identify a conditional tunnelling regime in which a single atom can only tunnel in the presence of a second particle, acting as a single atom switch. Such second-order tunnelling events, which are the dominating dynamical effect in the strongly interacting regime, have not been previously observed with ultracold atoms. Similar second-order processes form the basis of superexchange interactions between atoms on neighbouring lattice sites of a periodic potential, a central component of proposals for realizing quantum magnetism.

Nonequilibrium spin dynamics in a trapped fermi gas with effective spin-orbit interactions

We consider a trapped atomic system in the presence of spatially varying laser fields. The laser-atom interaction generates a pseudospin degree of freedom (referred to simply as spin) and leads to an effective spin-orbit coupling for the fermions in the trap. Reflections of the fermions from the trap boundaries provide a physical mechanism for effective momentum relaxation and nontrivial spin dynamics due to the emergent spin-orbit coupling. We explicitly consider evolution of an initially spin-polarized Fermi gas in a two-dimensional harmonic trap and derive nonequilibrium behavior of the spin polarization. It shows periodic echoes with a frequency equal to the harmonic trapping frequency. Perturbations, such as an asymmetry of the trap, lead to the suppression of the spin echo amplitudes. We discuss a possible experimental setup to observe spin dynamics and provide numerical estimates of relevant parameters.

Critical point of an interacting two-dimensional atomic Bose gas

We have measured the critical atom number in an array of harmonically trapped two-dimensional (2D) Bose gases of rubidium atoms at different temperatures. We found this number to be about 5 times higher than predicted by the semiclassical theory of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in the ideal gas. This demonstrates that the conventional BEC picture is inapplicable in an interacting 2D atomic gas, in sharp contrast to the three-dimensional case. A simple heuristic model based on the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless theory of 2D superfluidity and the local density approximation accounts well for our experimental results.

Addressing individual atoms in optical lattices with standing-wave driving fields

A scheme for addressing individual atoms in one- or two-dimensional optical lattices loaded with one atom per site is proposed. The scheme is based on position-dependent atomic population transfer induced by several standing-wave driving fields. This allows various operations important in quantum-information processing, such as manipulation and measurement of any single-atom, two-qubit operations between any pair of adjacent atoms, and patterned loading of the lattice with one atom per every nth site for arbitrary n. The proposed scheme is robust against considerable imperfections and actually within reach of current technology.

Edge transport in 2D cold atom optical lattices

We theoretically study the observable response of edge currents in two-dimensional cold atom optical lattices. As an example, we use Gutzwiller mean-field theory to relate persistent edge currents surrounding a Mott insulator in a slowly rotating trapped Bose-Hubbard system to time of flight measurements. We briefly discuss an application, the detection of the Chern number using edge currents of a topologically ordered optical lattice insulator.