arXiv subjects

Walter Hofstetter

Publications and source records attributed to Walter Hofstetter.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Magnetic phases of mass- and population-imbalanced ultracold fermionic mixtures in optical lattices

We study magnetic phases of two-component mixtures of ultracold fermions with repulsive interactions in optical lattices in the presence of both hopping and population imbalance by means of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). It is shown that these mixtures can have easy-axis antiferromagnetic, ferrimagnetic, charge-density wave, and canted-antiferromagnetic order or be unordered depending on parameters of the system. We study the resulting phase diagram in detail and investigate the stability of the different phases with respect to thermal fluctuations. We also perform a quantitative analysis for a gas confined in a harmonic trap, both within the local density approximation and using a full real-space generalization of DMFT.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

Dynamical arrest of ultracold lattice fermions

We theoretically investigate the thermodynamics of an interacting inhomogeneous two-component Fermi gas in an optical lattice. Motivated by a recent experiment by L. Hackermüller et al., Science, 327, 1621 (2010), we study the effect of the interplay between thermodynamics and strong correlations on the size of the fermionic cloud. We use dynamical mean-field theory to compute the cloud size, which in the experiment shows an anomalous expansion behavior upon increasing attractive interaction. We confirm this qualitative effect but, assuming adiabaticity, we find quantitative agreement only for weak interactions. For strong interactions we observe significant non-equilibrium effects which we attribute to a dynamical arrest of the particles due to increasing correlations.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Time-Reversal-Invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard Model with Ultracold Fermions

We consider the time-reversal-invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard model which can be realized in cold atom experiments. In these experiments, an additional staggered potential and an artificial Rashba--type spin-orbit coupling are available. Without interactions, the system exhibits various phases such as topological and normal insulator, metal as well as semi--metal phases with two or even more Dirac cones. Using a combination of real-space dynamical mean-field theory and analytical techniques, we discuss the effect of on-site interactions and determine the corresponding phase diagram. In particular, we investigate the semi--metal to antiferromagnetic insulator transition and the stability of different topological insulator phases in the presence of strong interactions. We compute spectral functions which allow us to study the edge states of the strongly correlated topological phases.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Quantum phases of Bose-Bose mixtures on a triangular lattice

We investigate the zero temperature quantum phases of a Bose-Bose mixture on a triangular lattice using Bosonic Dynamical Mean Field Theory (BDMFT). We consider the case of total filling one where geometric frustration arises for asymmetric hopping. We map out a rich ground state phase diagram including xy-ferromagnetic, spin-density wave, superfluid, and supersolid phases. In particular, we identify a stripe spin-density wave phase for highly asymmetric hopping. On top of the spin-density wave, we find that the system generically shows weak charge (particle) density wave order.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Advantages of Mass-Imbalanced Ultracold Fermionic Mixtures for Approaching Quantum Magnetism in Optical Lattices

We study magnetic phases of two-component mixtures of ultracold fermions with repulsive interactions in optical lattices in the presence of hopping imbalance. Our analysis is based on dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) and its real-space generalization at finite temperature. We study the temperature dependence of the transition into the ordered state as a function of the interaction strength and the imbalance parameter in two and three spatial dimensions. We show that below the critical temperature for Néel order mass-imbalanced mixtures also exhibit a charge-density wave, which provides a directly observable signature of the ordered state. For the trapped system, we compare our results obtained by real-space DMFT to a local-density approximation. We calculate the entropy for a wide range of parameters and identify regions, in which mass-imbalanced mixtures could have clear advantages over balanced ones for the purpose of obtaining and detecting quantum magnetism.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Effects of Smooth Boundaries on Topological Edge Modes in Optical Lattices

Since the experimental realization of synthetic gauge fields for neutral atoms, the simulation of topologically non-trivial phases of matter with ultracold atoms has become a major focus of cold atom experiments. However, several obvious differences exist between cold atom and solid state systems, for instance the finite size of the atomic cloud and the smooth confining potential. In this article we show that sharp boundaries are not required to realize quantum Hall or quantum spin Hall physics in optical lattices and, on the contrary, that edge states which belong to a smooth confinement exhibit additional interesting properties, such as spatially resolved splitting and merging of bulk bands and the emergence of robust auxiliary states in bulk gaps to preserve the topological quantum numbers. In addition, we numerically validate that these states are robust against disorder. Finally, we analyze possible detection methods, with a focus on Bragg spectroscopy, to demonstrate that the edge states can be detected and that Bragg spectroscopy can reveal how topological edge states are connected to the different bulk bands.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2012

Anisotropic pair-superfluidity of trapped two-component Bose gases

We theoretically investigate the pair-superfluid phase of two-component ultracold gases with negative inter-species interactions in an optical lattice. We establish the phase diagram for filling $n=1$ at zero and finite temperature, by applying Bosonic Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, and confirm the stability of pair-superfluidity for asymmetric hopping of the two species. While the pair superfluid is found to be robust in the presence of a harmonic trap, we observe that it is destroyed already by a small population imbalance of the two species.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Anderson-Hubbard model with box disorder: Statistical dynamical mean-field theory investigation

Strongly correlated electrons with box disorder in high-dimensional lattices are investigated. We apply the statistical dynamical mean-field theory, which treats local correlations non-perturbatively. The incorporation of a finite lattice connectivity allows for the detection of disorder-induced localization via the probability distribution function of the local density of states. We obtain a complete paramagnetic ground state phase diagram and find correlation-induced as well as disorder-induced metal-insulator transitions. Our results qualitatively confirm predictions obtained by typical medium theory. Moreover, we find that the probability distribution function of the local density of states in the metallic phase strongly deviates from a log-normal distribution as found for the non-interacting case.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2011

Signatures of Delocalization in the Fermionic 1D Hubbard Model with Box Disorder: Comparative Study with DMRG and R-DMFT

We investigate the 1D Anderson-Hubbard model at half filling with box-disorder. The ground state phase diagram is obtained by means of real-space dynamical mean-field theory (R-DMFT) and the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). We find Mott insulating and Anderson localized regimes as well as a strong indication of a delocalized phase for intermediate interaction and disorder strength within accessible system sizes. These phases are characterized and distinguished by qualitatively different scaling behavior of the local density of states, the energy gap in the excitation spectrum and the inverse participation number.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Supersolid Phase of Cold Fermionic Polar Molecules in 2D Optical Lattices

We study a system of ultra-cold fermionic polar molecules in a two-dimensional square lattice interacting via both the long-ranged dipole-dipole interaction and a short-ranged on-site attractive interaction. Singlet superfluid, charge density wave, and supersolid phases are found to exist in the system. We map out the zero temperature phase diagram and find that the supersolid phase is considerably stabilized by the dipole-dipole interaction and thus can exist over a large region of filling factors. We study the melting of the supersolid phase with increasing temperature, map out a finite temperature phase diagram of the system at fixed filling, and determine the parameter region where the supersolid phase can possibly be observed in experiments.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Tunable anisotropic magnetism in trapped two-component Bose gases

We theoretically address magnetic ordering at zero and finite temperature in both homogeneous and trapped Bose-Bose mixtures in optical lattices. By using Bosonic Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, we obtain the phase diagram of the homogeneous two-component Bose-Hubbard model in a three-dimensional (3D) cubic lattice, which features competing magnetic order of XY-ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic type in addition to the Mott and superfluid states. We show that these magnetic phases persist also in the presence of a harmonic trap.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Effect of interactions on harmonically confined Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices

We investigate a Bose-Fermi mixture in a three-dimensional optical lattice, trapped in a harmonic potential. Using Generalized Dynamical Mean-Field theory, which treats the Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi interaction in a fully non-perturbative way, we show that for experimentally relevant parameters a peak in the condensate fraction close to the point of vanishing Bose-Fermi interaction is reproduced within a single band framework. We identify two physical mechanisms contributing to this effect: the spatial redistribution of particles when the interspecies interaction is changed and the reduced phase space for strong interactions, which results in a higher temperature at fixed entropy.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Magnetism and domain formation in SU(3)-symmetric multi-species Fermi mixtures

We study the phase diagram of an SU(3)-symmetric mixture of three-component ultracold fermions with attractive interactions in an optical lattice, including the additional effect on the mixture of an effective three-body constraint induced by three-body losses. We address the properties of the system in $D \geq 2$ by using dynamical mean-field theory and variational Monte Carlo techniques. The phase diagram of the model shows a strong interplay between magnetism and superfluidity. In the absence of the three-body constraint (no losses), the system undergoes a phase transition from a color superfluid phase to a trionic phase, which shows additional particle density modulations at half-filling. Away from the particle-hole symmetric point the color superfluid phase is always spontaneously magnetized, leading to the formation of different color superfluid domains in systems where the total number of particles of each species is conserved. This can be seen as the SU(3) symmetric realization of a more general tendency to phase-separation in three-component Fermi mixtures. The three-body constraint strongly disfavors the trionic phase, stabilizing a (fully magnetized) color superfluid also at strong coupling. With increasing temperature we observe a transition to a non-magnetized SU(3) Fermi liquid phase.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Canted Antiferromagnetic Order of Imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixtures in Optical Lattices by Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

We investigate antiferromagnetic order of repulsively interacting fermionic atoms in an optical lattice by means of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT). Special attention is paid to the case of an imbalanced mixture. We take into account the presence of an underlying harmonic trap, both in a local density approximation and by performing full Real-Space DMFT calculations. We consider the case that the particle density in the trap center is at half filling, leading to an antiferromagnetic region in the center, surrounded by a Fermi liquid region at the edge. In the case of an imbalanced mixture, the antiferromagnetism is directed perpendicular to the ferromagnetic polarization and canted. We pay special attention to the boundary structure between the antiferromagnetic and the Fermi liquid phase. For the moderately strong interactions considered here, no Stoner instability toward a ferromagnetic phase is found. Phase separation is only observed for strong imbalance and sufficiently large repulsion.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2010

Dynamics, Synchronization and Quantum Phase Transitions of Two Dissipative Spins

We analyze the static and dynamical properties of two Ising-coupled quantum spins embedded in a common bosonic bath as an archetype of dissipative quantum mechanics. First, we elucidate the ground state phase diagram for an ohmic and a subohmic bath using a combination of bosonic numerical renormalization group (NRG), analytical techniques and intuitive arguments. Second, employing the time-dependent NRG we investigate the system's rich dynamical behavior arising from the complex interplay between spin-spin and spin-bath interactions. Interestingly, spin oscillations can synchronize due to the proximity of the common non-Markovian bath and the system displays highly entangled steady states for certain nonequilibrium initial preparations. We complement our non-perturbative numerical results by exact analytical solutions when available and provide quantitative limits on the applicability of the perturbative Bloch-Redfield approach at weak coupling.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Decoherence in a Double-Dot Aharonov-Bohm Interferometer

Coherence in electronic interferometers is typically believed to be restored fully in the limit of small voltages, frequencies and temperatures. However, it is crucial to check this essentially perturbative argument by nonperturbative methods. Here, we use the numerical renormalization group to study ac transport and decoherence in an experimentally realizable model interferometer, a parallel double quantum dot coupled to a phonon mode. The model allows to clearly distinguish renormalization effects from decoherence. We discuss finite frequency transport and confirm the restoration of coherence in the dc limit.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Mott-Hubbard and Anderson metal-insulator transitions in correlated lattice fermions with binary disorder

Strongly correlated fermions in a crystal or in an optical lattice in the presence of binary alloy disorder are investigated. We employ the statistical dynamical mean-field theory, which incorporates both, local fluctuations due to disorder and local correlations due to interaction, to solve the Anderson-Hubbard model. Localization due to disorder is studied by means of the probability distribution function of the local density of states. We obtain a complete paramagnetic ground state phase diagram consisting of disordered correlated metal, Anderson-Mott insulator, and band insulator.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2010

Electric Field Controlled Magnetic Anisotropy in a Single Molecule

We have measured quantum transport through an individual Fe$_4$ single-molecule magnet embedded in a three-terminal device geometry. The characteristic zero-field splittings of adjacent charge states and their magnetic field evolution are observed in inelastic tunneling spectroscopy. We demonstrate that the molecule retains its magnetic properties, and moreover, that the magnetic anisotropy is significantly enhanced by reversible electron addition / subtraction controlled with the gate voltage. Single-molecule magnetism can thus be electrically controlled.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗