Searching for a supersolid in cold-atom optical lattices

Journal Article · Mon May 15 00:00:00 EDT 2006 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.73.0· OSTI ID:20787194

Scarola, V W; Das Sarma, S ^[1]; Demler, E ^[2]

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1. Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 (United States)
2. Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 (United States)

We suggest a technique for the observation of a predicted supersolid phase in extended Bose-Hubbard models which are potentially realizable in cold-atom optical lattice systems. In particular, we discuss important subtleties arising from the existence of the trapping potential which lead to an externally imposed (as opposed to spontaneous) breaking of translational invariance. We show, by carefully including the trapping potential in our theoretical formalism, that noise correlations could prove instrumental in identifying the supersolid and density wave phases. We also find that the noise correlation peak width scales inversely with the relative size of trapped Mott domains.

• OSTI ID: 20787194
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Vol. 73, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.73.051601; (c) 2006 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ATOMS
BOSONS
COOLING
CORRELATIONS
DENSITY
HUBBARD MODEL
LASER RADIATION
NOISE
OPTICS
POTENTIALS
RADIATION PRESSURE
TRAPPING