Physics – Condensed Matter – Strongly Correlated Electrons
Scientific paper
2002-05-08
Physical Review B 66, 075128 (2002).
Physics
Condensed Matter
Strongly Correlated Electrons
17 pages, 14 figures; (v2) minor additions and new references
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevB.66.075128
Recent experiments on ultracold atomic gases in an optical lattice potential have produced a Mott insulating state of Rb atoms. This state is stable to a small applied potential gradient (an `electric' field), but a resonant response was observed when the potential energy drop per lattice spacing (E), was close to the repulsive interaction energy (U) between two atoms in the same lattice potential well. We identify all states which are resonantly coupled to the Mott insulator for E close to U via an infinitesimal tunneling amplitude between neighboring potential wells. The strong correlation between these states is described by an effective Hamiltonian for the resonant subspace. This Hamiltonian exhibits quantum phase transitions associated with an Ising density wave order, and with the appearance of superfluidity in the directions transverse to the electric field. We suggest that the observed resonant response is related to these transitions, and propose experiments to directly detect the order parameters. The generalizations to electric fields applied in different directions, and to a variety of lattices, should allow study of numerous other correlated quantum phases.
Girvin Steven M.
Sachdev Subir
Sengupta Kausik
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