Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Phases of a 2D Bose Gas in an Optical Lattice

Published

Author(s)

Karina K. Jimenez Garcia, Yu-Ju Lin, James V. Porto, Ian B. Spielman

Abstract

Ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices realize essential models in condensed matter physics. Like with most experiments with ultra-cold atoms, our Rubidium-87 Bose Einstein condensate is confined in a harmonic trapping potential that persists even when loaded into an optical lattice. Here we realize the 2D Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian and focus on the effects of the trapping term, not present in bulk condensed matter systems. By measuring condensate fraction we identify the transition from superfluid to insulator as a function of atom density and lattice depth. Our results are in excellent agreement with the Quantum Monte Carlo universal state diagram suitable for the trapped systems introduced by Rigol et. al. (Phys. Rev. A 79, 053605 (2009)).
Citation
Physical Review Letters

Keywords

atomic physics, Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), Bose-Hubbard model, Mott insulator, optical lattices, phase diagram, quantum gases

Citation

Jimenez, K. , Lin, Y. , Porto, J. and Spielman, I. (2010), Phases of a 2D Bose Gas in an Optical Lattice, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.110401 (Accessed October 31, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created September 9, 2010, Updated November 10, 2018