Mott-insulator States of ultracold atoms in optical resonators

We study the low temperature physics of an ultracold atomic gas in the potential formed inside a pumped optical resonator. Here, the height of the cavity potential, and hence the quantum state of the gas, depends not only on the pump parameters, but also on the atomic density through a dynamical ac-Stark shift of the cavity resonance. We derive the Bose-Hubbard model in one dimension and use the strong coupling expansion to determine the parameter regime in which the system is in the Mott-insulator state. We predict the existence of overlapping, competing Mott-insulator states, and bistable behavior in the vicinity of the shifted cavity resonance, controlled by the pump parameters. Outside these parameter regions, the state of the system is in most cases superfluid.     

光晶格中超冷原子系统的磁激发

囚禁在光学晶格中的旋量凝聚体由于其长的相干性和可调控性,使其成为时下热点的多比特量子计算的潜在候选载体,清楚地了解该体系的自旋和磁性的产生和调控就显得尤为重要.本文主要从理论上回顾了光晶格原子自旋链的磁性的由来和操控手段.从激光冷却原子出发,制备旋量玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体,并装载进光晶格,最后实现原子自旋链,对整个过程的理论研究进行了综述;就如何产生和操控自旋激发进行了详细探讨,其中包括磁孤子的制备;讨论了如何将原子自旋链应用于量子模拟.对光学晶格中的磁激发研究将会对其在冷原子物理、凝聚态物理、量子信息等各方向的应用起指导性作用.     

Quantum phase transition of cold atoms trapped in optical lattices

We review our recent theoretical advances in phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices, such as triangular lattice, honeycomb lattice, and Kagomé lattice. By employing the new developed numerical methods called dynamical cluster approximation and cellular dynamical mean-field theory, the properties in different phases of cold atoms in optical lattices are studied, such as density of states, Fermi surface and double occupancy. On triangular lattice, a reentrant behavior of phase translation line between Fermi liquid state and pseudogap state is found due to the Kondo effect. We find the system undergoes a second order Mott transition from a metallic state into a Mott insulator state on honeycomb lattice and triangular Kagomé lattice. The stability of quantum spin Hall phase towards interaction on honeycomb lattice with spin-orbital coupling is systematically discussed. And we investigate the transition from quantum spin Hall insulator to normal insulator in Kagomé lattice which includes a nearest-neighbor intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and a trimerized Hamiltonian. In addition, we propose the experimental protocols to observe these phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices.     

Commensurability effects for fermionic atoms trapped in 1D optical lattices

Fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states confined in optical lattices show strong commensurability effects due to the interplay between the atomic density wave ordering and the lattice potential. We show that spatially separated regions of commensurable and incommensurable phases can coexist. The commensurability between the harmonic trap and the lattice sites can be used to control the amplitude of the atomic density waves in the central region of the trap.     

Determination of the number of atoms trapped in an optical cavity

The number of atoms trapped within the mode of an optical cavity is determined in real time by monitoring the transmission of a weak probe beam. Continuous observation of atom number is accomplished in the strong coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics and functions in concert with a cooling scheme for radial atomic motion. The probe transmission exhibits sudden steps from one plateau to the next in response to the time evolution of the intracavity atom number, from N>or=3 to N=2-->1-->0 atoms, with some trapping events lasting over 1 s.     

Characterizing optical dipole trap via fluorescence of trapped cesium atoms

Optical dipole trap (ODT) is becoming an important tool of manipulating neutral atoms. In this paper ODT is realized with a far-off resonant laser beam strongly focused in the magneto-optical trap (MOT) of cesium atoms. The light shift is measured by simply monitoring the fluorescence of the atoms in the magneto-optical trap and the optical dipole trap simultaneously. The advantages of our experimental scheme are discussed, and the effect of the beam waist and power on the potential of dipole trap as well as heating rate is analyzed.     

Entanglement generation in trapped atoms

The two atoms in the ion trap are entangled by the interaction with an external excited atom. The evolution of the entanglement is analytically derived without the decoherence. Considering the spontaneous decay from the environment, the evolution of the entanglement is similar to the damping Rabi oscillation. The generation of entanglement is induced by the dipole-dipole type interaction of atoms. It is found that the entanglement of two trapped atoms is robust with the uniform interaction with the external atom. The collective spontaneous emission from the coupling between the atoms may enhance the entanglement.     

Superradiance of trapped atoms

A new method for calculating the total power of the spontaneous emission of a few motionless two-level atoms located at a distance of the order of the resonance-radiation wavelength with dipole-dipole interaction is suggested. The method is based on the Schrödinger representation. It is shown, as an example, that two trapped atoms cannot emit a pulse of superradiance under any conditions, while four atoms can emit such a pulse at certain conditions. Different ways of introducing the quasi-stationary states of atoms along with the generalization of the proposed method to other resonance systems are discussed.     

Bose-Einstein condensation of particle-hole pairs in ultracold fermionic atoms trapped within optical lattices

We investigate the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC, superfluidity) of particle-hole pairs in ultracold fermionic atoms with repulsive interactions and arbitrary polarization, which are trapped within optical lattices. In the strongly repulsive limit, the dynamics of particle-hole pairs can be described by a hard-core Bose-Hubbard model. The insulator-superfluid and charge-density-wave- (CDW) superfluid phase transitions can be induced by decreasing and increasing the potential depths with controlling the trapping laser intensity, respectively. The parameter and polarization dependence of the critical temperatures for the ordered states (BEC and/or CDW) are discussed simultaneously.     

低维俘获原子的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚中的有限粒子数效应

基于Thomas-Fermi近似,通过对配分函数的高温展开确定了体系的有效态密度，得到了在忽略相互作用下，低维受俘获原子玻色爱因斯坦凝聚的临界温度,并计算出了临界温度附近体系的比热容随温度的变化行为.研究结果表明：二维情况下，体系的比热容c正比于T²;而在一维情况下，c随温度呈线性增加. 关键词： 玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚 有限粒子数 低维束缚势 Thomas-Fermi近似     

Quantum memory with optically trapped atoms

We report the experimental demonstration of quantum memory for collective atomic states in a far-detuned optical dipole trap. Generation of the collective atomic state is heralded by the detection of a Raman scattered photon and accompanied by storage in the ensemble of atoms. The optical dipole trap provides confinement for the atoms during the quantum storage while retaining the atomic coherence. We probe the quantum storage by cross correlation of the photon pair arising from the Raman scattering and the retrieval of the atomic state stored in the memory. Nonclassical correlations are observed for storage times up to 60 mus.     

Scheme for generating the singlet state of three atoms trapped in distant cavities coupled by optical fibers

An effective scheme is proposed to generate the singlet state with three four-level atoms trapped in three distant cavities connected with each other by three optical fibers, respectively. After a series of appropriate atom–cavity interactions, which can be arbitrarily controlled via the selective pairing of Raman transitions and corresponding optical switches, a three-atom singlet state can be successfully generated. The influence of atomic spontaneous decay, photon leakage of cavities and optical fibers on the fidelity of the state is numerically simulated showing that the three-atom singlet state can be generated with high fidelity by choosing the experimental parameters appropriately.     

Novel superfluidity in a trapped gas of Fermi atoms with repulsive interaction loaded on an optical lattice

We investigate a possibility of superfluidity in a trapped gas of Fermi atoms with a repulsive interaction in the presence of an optical lattice. Applying the exact diagonalization method to a one-dimensional Hubbard model including the trap potential, we find that, when the strength of the repulsive interaction exceeds a critical value, the binding energy of two Fermi atoms becomes negative below the half-filling case, indicating that an attractive interaction effectively works between Fermi atoms. In this case, a "Mott insulating core" appears in the center of the trap, where each site is occupied by one atom. The Cooper-pair correlation strongly develops between atoms in the left- and right-hand sides of this core.