arXiv subjects

R. E. Barfknecht

Publications and source records attributed to R. E. Barfknecht.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Few-body Bose gases in low dimensions -- a laboratory for quantum dynamics

Cold atomic gases have become a paradigmatic system for exploring fundamental physics, which at the same time allows for applications in quantum technologies. The accelerating developments in the field have led to a highly advanced set of engineering techniques that, for example, can tune interactions, shape the external geometry, select among a large set of atomic species with different properties, or control the number of atoms. In particular, it is possible to operate in lower dimensions and drive atomic systems into the strongly correlated regime. In this review, we discuss recent advances in few-body cold atom systems confined in low dimensions from a theoretical viewpoint. We mainly focus on bosonic systems in one dimension and provide an introduction to the static properties before we review the state-of-the-art research into quantum dynamical processes stimulated by the presence of correlations. Besides discussing the fundamental physical phenomena arising in these systems, we also provide an overview of the calculational and numerical tools and methods that are commonly used, thus delivering a balanced and comprehensive overview of the field. We conclude by giving an outlook on possible future directions that are interesting to explore in these correlated systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

Generation of spin currents by a temperature gradient in a two-terminal device

Theoretical and experimental studies of the interaction between spins and temperature are vital for the development of spin caloritronics, as they dictate the design of future devices. In this work, we propose a two-terminal cold-atom simulator to study that interaction. The proposed quantum simulator consists of strongly interacting atoms that occupy two temperature reservoirs connected by a one-dimensional link. First, we argue that the dynamics in the link can be described using an inhomogeneous Heisenberg spin chain whose couplings are defined by the local temperature. Second, we show the existence of a spin current in a system with a temperature difference by studying the dynamics that follows the spin-flip of an atom in the link. A temperature gradient accelerates the impurity in one direction more than in the other, leading to an overall spin current similar to the spin Seebeck effect.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Engineering entanglement Hamiltonians with strongly interacting cold atoms in optical traps

We present a proposal for the realization of entanglement Hamiltonians in one-dimensional critical spin systems with strongly interacting cold atoms. Our approach is based on the notion that the entanglement spectrum of such systems can be realized with a physical Hamiltonian containing a set of position-dependent couplings. We focus on reproducing the universal ratios of the entanglement spectrum for systems in two different geometries: a harmonic trap, which corresponds to a partition embedded in an infinite system, and a linear potential, which reproduces the properties of a half-partition with open boundary conditions. Our results demonstrate the possibility of measuring the entanglement spectra of the Heisenberg and XX models in a realistic cold-atom experimental setting by simply using gravity and standard trapping techniques.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Systematic interpolatory ansatz for one-dimensional polaron systems

We explore a new variational principle for studying one-dimensional quantum systems in a trapping potential. We focus on the Fermi polaron problem, where a single distinguishable impurity interacts through a contact potential with a background of identical fermions. We can accurately describe this system at arbitrary finite repulsion by constructing a truncated basis containing states at both the limits of zero and infinite repulsion. We show how to construct this basis and how to obtain energies, density matrices and correlation functions, and provide results both for a harmonic well and a double well for various particle numbers. The results are compared both with matrix product states methods and with the analytical result for two particles in a harmonic well.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Realizing time crystals in discrete quantum few-body systems

The exotic phenomenon of time translation symmetry breaking under periodic driving - the time crystal - has been shown to occur in many-body systems even in clean setups where disorder is absent. In this work, we propose the realization of time-crystals in few-body systems, both in the context of trapped cold atoms with strong interactions and of a circuit of superconducting qubits. We show how these two models can be treated in a fairly similar way by adopting an effective spin chain description, to which we apply a simple driving protocol. We focus on the response of the magnetization in the presence of imperfect pulses and interactions, and show how the results can be interpreted, in the cold atomic case, in the context of experiments with trapped bosons and fermions. Furthermore, we provide a set of realistic parameters for the implementation of the superconducting circuit.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Effects of interaction imbalance in a strongly repulsive one-dimensional Bose gas

We calculate the spatial distributions and the dynamics of a few-body two-component strongly interacting Bose gas confined to an effectively one-dimensional trapping potential. We describe the densities for each component in the trap for different interaction and population imbalances. We calculate the time evolution of the system and show that, for a certain ratio of interactions, the minority population travels through the system as an effective wave packet.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Correlation properties of a three-body bosonic mixture in a harmonic trap

We make use of a simple pair correlated wave function approach to obtain results for the ground-state densities and momentum distribution of a one-dimensional three-body bosonic system with different interactions in a harmonic trap. For equal interactions this approach is able to reproduce the known analytical cases of zero and infinite repulsion. We show that our results for the correlations agree with the exact diagonalization in all interaction regimes and with analytical results for the strongly repulsive impurity. This method also enables us to access the more complicated cases of mixed interactions, and the probability densities of these systems are analyzed.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗