Flat bands, Dirac cones, and atom dynamics in an optical lattice

Journal Article · Fri Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.82.041402· OSTI ID:21456974

Apaja, V; Hyrkaes, M; Manninen, M ^[1]

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1. Nanoscience Center, Department of Physics, University of Jyvaeskylae, FIN-40014 Jyvaeskylae (Finland)

We study atoms trapped with a harmonic confinement in an optical lattice characterized by a flat band and Dirac cones. We show that such an optical lattice can be constructed which can be accurately described with the tight-binding or Hubbard models. In the case of fermions the release of the harmonic confinement removes fast atoms occupying the Dirac cones while those occupying the flat band remain immobile. Using exact diagonalization and dynamics we demonstrate that a similar strong occupation of the flat band does not happen in the bosonic case and furthermore that the mean-field model is not capable of describing the dynamics of the boson cloud.

• OSTI ID: 21456974
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Vol. 82, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.82.041402; (c) 2010 The American Physical Society; ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
ATOMS
BOSONS
CLOUDS
CONES
CONFINEMENT
FERMIONS
HUBBARD MODEL
MEAN-FIELD THEORY
TRAPPING
CRYSTAL MODELS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS