arXiv subjects

Benoît Grémaud

Publications and source records attributed to Benoît Grémaud.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Haldane phase in the sawtooth lattice: Edge states, entanglement spectrum and the flat band

Using density matrix renormalization group numerical calculations, we study the phase diagram of the half filled Bose-Hubbard system in the sawtooth lattice with strong frustration in the kinetic energy term. We focus in particular on values of the hopping terms which produce a flat band and show that, in the presence of contact and near neighbor repulsion, three phases exist: Mott insulator (MI), charge density wave (CDW), and the topological Haldane insulating (HI) phase which displays edge states and particle imbalance between the two ends of the system. We find that, even though the entanglement spectrum in the Haldane phase is not doubly degenerate, it is in excellent agreement with the entanglement spectrum of the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) state built in the Wannier basis associated with the flat band. This emphasizes that the absence of degeneracy in the entanglement spectrum is not necessarily a signature of a non-topological phase, but rather that the (hidden) protecting symmetry involves non-local states. Finally, we also show that the HI phase is stable against small departure from flatness of the band but is destroyed for larger ones.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Excitation and dynamics in the extended bose-hubbard model

The one-dimensional extended bosonic Hubbard model has been shown to exhibit a variety of phases ranging from Mott insulator and superfluid to exotic supersolids and Haldane insulators depending on the filling and the relative value of the contact ($U$) and near neighbor ($V$) interaction strengths. In this paper we use the density matrix renormalization group and the time evolving block decimation numerical methods to study in detail the dynamics and excitation spectra of this model in its various phases. In particular, we study in detail the behavior of the charge and neutral gaps which characterize the Mott, charge density and Haldane insulating phases. We also show that in addition to the gapless modes at $k=0$, the supersolid phase exhibits gapless modes at a finite $k$ which depends on the filling.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Speckle intensity correlations of photons scattered by cold atoms

The irradiation of a dilute cloud of cold atoms with a coherent light field produces a random intensity distribution known as laser speckle. Its statistical fluctuations contain information about the mesoscopic scattering processes at work inside the disordered medium. Following up on earlier work by Assaf and Akkermans [Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ \textbf{98}, 083601 (2007)], we analyze how static speckle intensity correlations are affected by an internal Zeeman degeneracy of the scattering atoms. It is proven on general grounds that the speckle correlations cannot exceed the standard Rayleigh law. On the contrary, because which-path information is stored in the internal atomic states, the intensity correlations suffer from strong decoherence and become exponentially small in the diffusive regime applicable to an optically thick cloud.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2015

Triangular and Honeycomb Lattices of Cold Atoms in Optical Cavities

We consider a two-dimensional homogeneous ensemble of cold bosonic atoms loaded inside two optical cavities and pumped by a far-detuned external laser field. We examine the conditions for these atoms to self-organize into triangular and honeycomb lattices as a result of superradiance. By collectively scattering the pump photons, the atoms feed the initially empty cavity modes. As a result, the superposition of the pump and cavity fields creates a space-periodic light-shift external potential and atoms self-organize into the potential wells of this optical lattice. Depending on the phase of the cavity fields with respect to the pump laser, these minima can either form a triangular or a hexagonal lattice. By numerically solving the dynamical equations of the coupled atom-cavity system, we have shown that the two stable atomic structures at long times are the triangular lattice and the honeycomb lattice with equally-populated sites. We have also studied how to drive atoms from one lattice structure to another by dynamically changing the phase of the cavity fields with respect to the pump laser.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Berry Curvature of interacting bosons in a honeycomb lattice

We consider soft-core bosons with onsite interaction loaded in the honeycomb lattice with different site energies for the two sublattices. Using both a mean-field approach and quantum Monte-Carlo simulations, we show that the topology of the honeycomb lattice results in a non-vanishing Berry curvature for the band structure of the single-particle excitations of the system. This Berry curvature induces an anomalous Hall effect. It is seen by studying the time evolution of a wavepacket, namely a superfluid ground state in a harmonic trap, subjected either to a constant force (Bloch oscillations) or to a sudden shift of the trap center.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Thermalization of matter waves in speckle potentials

We show that the momentum distribution of a nonlinear matter wave suddenly released with a finite velocity in a speckle potential converges, after an out-of-equilibrium evolution, to a universal Rayleigh-Jeans thermal distribution. By exploring the complete phase diagram of the equilibrated wave, we discover that for low but nonzero values of the disorder strength, a large-scale structure -a condensate- appears in the equilibrium distribution.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2014

Half-skyrmion and meron pair in spinor condensates

We propose a simple experimental scheme to generate spin textures in the ground state of interacting ultracold bosonic atoms loaded in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. Our scheme is based on two co-propagating Laguerre-Gauss laser beams illuminating the atoms and coupling two of their internal ground state Zeeman sublevels. Using a Gross-Pitaevskii description, we show that the ground state of the atomic system has different topological properties depending on the interaction strength and the laser beam intensity. A half-skyrmion state develops at low interactions while a meron pair develops at large interactions.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Dynamics of localized waves in 1D random potentials: statistical theory of the coherent forward scattering peak

As recently discovered [PRL ${\bf 109}$ 190601(2012)], Anderson localization in a bulk disordered system triggers the emergence of a coherent forward scattering (CFS) peak in momentum space, which twins the well-known coherent backscattering (CBS) peak observed in weak localization experiments. Going beyond the perturbative regime, we address here the long-time dynamics of the CFS peak in a 1D random system and we relate this novel interference effect to the statistical properties of the eigenfunctions and eigenspectrum of the corresponding random Hamiltonian. Our numerical results show that the dynamics of the CFS peak is governed by the logarithmic level repulsion between localized states, with a time scale that is, with good accuracy, twice the Heisenberg time. This is in perfect agreement with recent findings based on the nonlinear $σ$-model. In the stationary regime, the width of the CFS peak in momentum space is inversely proportional to the localization length, reflecting the exponential decay of the eigenfunctions in real space, while its height is exactly twice the background, reflecting the Poisson statistical properties of the eigenfunctions. Our results should be easily extended to higher dimensional systems and other symmetry classes.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

U(3) artificial gauge fields for cold atoms

We propose to generate an artificial non-Abelian $U(3)$ gauge field by using a 2-tripod scheme, namely two tripod configurations sharing a common ground state level and driven by resonant 1-photon transitions. Using an appropriate combination of four Laguerre-Gauss and two Hermite-Gauss laser beams, we are able to produce a $U(3)$-monopole and a $U(3)$ spin-orbit coupling for both alkali and alkaline-earth atoms. This 2-tripod scheme could open the way to the study of interacting spinor condensates subjected to $U(3)$-monopoles.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Dirac fields in curved spacetime as Fermi-Hubbard model with non unitary tunnelings

In this article we show that a Dirac Hamiltonian in a curved background spacetime can be interpreted, when discretized, as a tight binding Fermi-Hubbard model with non unitary tunnelings. We find the form of the nonunitary tunneling matrices in terms of the metric tensor. The main motivation behind this exercise is the feasibility of such Hamiltonians by means of laser assisted tunnelings in cold atomic experiments. The mapping thus provide a physical interpretation of such Hamiltonians. We demonstrate the use of the mapping on the example of time dependent metric in 2+1 dimensions. Studying the spin dynamics, we find qualitative agreement with known theoretical predictions, namely the particle pair creation in expanding universe.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Half-integer Mott-insulator phases in the imbalanced honeycomb lattice

Using mean-field theory, we investigate the ground state properties of ultracold bosons loaded in a honeycomb lattice with on-site repulsive interactions and imbalanced nearest-neighbor hopping amplitudes. Taking into account correlations between strongly coupled neighboring sites through an improved Gutzwiller ansatz, we predict the existence of half-integer Mott-insulator phases, i.e. states with half-integer filling and vanishing compressibility. These insulating phases result from the interplay between quantum correlations and the topology of the honeycomb lattice, and could be easily addressed experimentally as they have clear signatures in momentum space.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Momentum-space dynamics of Dirac quasiparticles in correlated random potentials: Interplay between dynamical and Berry phases

We consider Dirac quasi-particles, as realized with cold atoms loaded in a honeycomb lattice or in a $π$-flux square lattice, in the presence of a weak correlated disorder such that the disorder fluctuations do not couple the two Dirac points of the lattices. We numerically and theoretically investigate the time evolution of the momentum distribution of such quasi-particles when they are initially prepared in a quasi-monochromatic wave packet with a given mean momentum. The parallel transport of the pseudo-spin degree of freedom along scattering paths in momentum space generates a geometrical phase which alters the interference associated with reciprocal scattering paths. In the massless case, a well-known dip in the momentum distribution develops at backscattering (respective to the Dirac point considered) around the transport mean free time. This dip later vanishes in the honeycomb case because of trigonal warping. In the massive case, the dynamical phase of the scattering paths becomes crucial. Its interplay with the geometrical phase induces an additional transient broken reflection symmetry in the momentum distribution. The direction of this asymmetry is a property of the Dirac point considered, independent of the energy of the wave packet. These Berry phase effects could be observed in current cold atom lattice experiments.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2013

From antiferromagnetic order to magnetic textures in the two dimensional Fermi Hubbard model with synthetic spin orbit interaction

We study the interacting Fermi-Hubbard model in two spatial dimensions with synthetic gauge coupling of the spin orbit Rashba type, at half-filling. Using real space mean field theory, we numerically determine the phase as a function of the interaction strength for different values of the gauge field parameters. For a fixed value of the gauge field, we observe that when the strength of the repulsive interaction is increased, the system enters into an antiferromagnetic phase, then undergoes a first order phase transition to an non collinear magnetic phase. Depending on the gauge field parameter, this phase further evolves to the one predicted from the effective Heisenberg model obtained in the limit of large interaction strength. We explain the presence of the antiferromagnetic phase at small interaction from the computation of the spin-spin susceptibility which displays a divergence at low temperatures for the antiferromagnetic ordering. We discuss, how the divergence is related to the nature of the underlying Fermi surfaces. Finally, the fact that the first order phase transitions for different gauge field parameters occur at unrelated critical interaction strengths arises from a Hofstadter-like situation, i.e. for different magnetic phases, the mean-field Hamiltonians have different translational symmetries.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Enhanced backscattering of a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate

We study experimentally and numerically the quasi-bidimensional transport of a $^{87}$Rb Bose-Einstein condensate launched with a velocity $v_0$ inside a disordered optical potential created by a speckle pattern. A time-of-flight analysis reveals a pronounced enhanced density peak in the backscattering direction $-v_0$, a feature reminiscent of coherent backscattering. Detailed numerical simulations indicate however that other effects also contribute to this enhancement, including a "backscattering echo" due to the position-momentum correlations of the initial wave packet.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Analytical and numerical study of uncorrelated disorder on a honeycomb lattice

We consider a tight-binding model on the regular honeycomb lattice with uncorrelated on-site disorder. We use two independent methods (recursive Green's function and self-consistent Born approximation) to extract the scattering mean free path, the scattering mean free time, the density of states and the localization length as a function of the disorder strength. The two methods give excellent quantitative agreement for these single-particle properties. Furthermore, a finite-size scaling analysis reveals that all localization lengths for different lattice sizes and different energies (including the energy at the Dirac points) collapse onto a single curve, in agreement with the one-parameter scaling theory of localization. The predictions of the self-consistent theory of localization however fail to quantitatively reproduce these numerically-extracted localization lengths.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2012

Coherent Backscattering of Ultracold Matter Waves: Momentum Space Signatures

Using analytical and numerical methods, it is shown that the momentum distribution of a matter wave packet launched in a random potential exhibits a pronounced coherent backscattering (CBS) peak. By analyzing the momentum distribution, key transport times can be directly measured. The CBS peak can be used to prove that transport occurs in the phase-coherent regime, and measuring its time dependence permits monitoring the transition from classical diffusion to Anderson localization.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2011

Pairing properties of cold fermions in the honeycomb lattice

The pairing properties of ultracold fermions, with an attractive interaction, loaded in a honeycomb (graphene-like) optical lattice are studied in a mean-field approach. We emphasize, in the presence of a harmonic trap, the unambiguous signatures of the linear dispersion relation of the band structure around half-filling (i.e. the massless Dirac fermions) in the local order parameter, in particular in the situations of either imbalance hoping parameters or imbalance populations. It can also be observed in the system response to external perturbation, for instance by measuring the pair destruction rate when modulating the optical lattice depth. Going beyond the mean-field level, we estimate the critical temperature for the "condensation" of the preformed pairs.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Synthetic magnetic fluxes on the honeycomb lattice

We devise experimental schemes able to mimic uniform and staggered magnetic fluxes acting on ultracold two-electron atoms, such as ytterbium atoms, propagating in a honeycomb lattice. The atoms are first trapped into two independent state-selective triangular lattices and are further exposed to a suitable configuration of resonant Raman laser beams. These beams induce hops between the two triangular lattices and make atoms move in a honeycomb lattice. Atoms traveling around each unit cell of this honeycomb lattice pick up a nonzero phase. In the uniform case, the artificial magnetic flux sustained by each cell can reach about two flux quanta, thereby realizing a cold atom analogue of the Harper model with its notorious Hofstadter's butterfly structure. Different condensed-matter phenomena such as the relativistic integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, as observed in graphene samples, could be targeted with this scheme.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗