Spinor Bosonic Atoms in Optical Lattices: Symmetry Breaking and Fractionalization

We present an analytic description of the finite-temperature phase diagram of the Bose-Hubbard model, successfully describing the physics of cold bosonic atoms trapped in optical lattices and superlattices. Based on a standard statistical mechanics approach, we provide the exact expression for the boundary between the superfluid and the normal fluid by solving the self-consistency equations involved in the mean-field approximation to the Bose-Hubbard model. The zero-temperatu...

A mixture of ultracold bosons and fermions placed in an optical lattice constitutes a novel kind of quantum gas, and leads to phenomena, which so far have been discussed neither in atomic physics, nor in condensed matter physics. We discuss the phase diagram at low temperatures, and in the limit of strong atom-atom interactions, and predict the existence of quantum phases that involve pairing of fermions with one or more bosons, or, respectively, bosonic holes. The resulting ...

We study the physics of interacting spin-$1$ bosons in an optical lattice using a variational Gutzwiller technique. We compute the mean-field ground state wave-function and discuss the evolution of the condensate, spin, nematic, and singlet order parameters across the superfluid-Mott transition. We then extend the Gutzwiller method to derive the equations governing the dynamics of low energy excitations in the lattice. Linearizing these equations, we compute the excitation sp...

These lectures are an introduction to the physics of strongly correlated fermions and bosons. They are specially targeted for the experimental realizations that have been provided by cold atomic gases in optical lattices.

We study elementary excitations of spin-1 bosons with antiferromagnetic interaction in an optical lattice by applying the Gutzwiller approximation to the spin-1 Bose-Hubbard model. There appear various excitations associated with spin degrees of freedom in the Mott-insulator (MI) phase as well as in the superfluid (SF) phase. In this system, the ground state in the MI phase is known to exhibit a remarkable effect of even-odd parity of particle filling, in which even fillings ...

We study the superfluid-Mott insulator transition of antiferromagnetic spin-1 bosons in an optical lattice described by a Bose-Hubbard model. Our variational study with the Gutzwiller-type trial wave function determines that the superfluid-Mott insulator transition is a first-order one at a part of the phase boundary curve, contrary to the spinless case. This first-order transition may be observed through an experiment, such as a Stern-Gerlach type, under a magnetic field.

Motivated by recent realizations of spin-1 NaRb mixtures in the experiments, here we investigate heteronuclear magnetism in the Mott-insulating regime. Different from the identical mixtures where the boson (fermion) statistics only admits even (odd) parity states from angular momentum composition, for heteronuclear atoms in principle all angular momentum states are allowed, which can give rise to new magnetic phases. Various magnetic phases can be developed over these degener...

Ultracold atoms in optical lattices undergo a quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator as the lattice potential depth is increased. We describe an approximate theory of interacting bosons in optical lattices which provides a qualitative description of both superfluid and insulator states. The theory is based on a change of variables in which the boson coherent state amplitude is replaced by an effective potential which promotes phase coherence between di...

We analyze the behavior of cold spin-1 particles with antiferromagnetic interactions in a one-dimensional optical lattice using density matrix renormalization group calculations. Correlation functions and the dimerization are shown and we also present results for the energy gap between ground state and the spin excited states. We confirm the anticipated phase diagram, with Mott-insulating regions of alternating dimerized S=1 chains for odd particle density versus on-site sing...

We reveal underlying principles of nonlinear localization of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice. Our theory shows that spin-dependent optical lattices can be used to manipulate both the type and magnitude of nonlinear interaction between the ultracold atomic species and to observe nontrivial two-componentnlocalized states of a condensate in both bands and gaps of the matter-wave band-gap structure.