Critical behavior driven by the confining potential in optical lattices with ultra-cold fermions?

Abstract

A recent paper [V. L. Campo et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 240403 (2007) has proposed a two-parameter scaling method to determine the phase diagram of the fermionic Hubbard model from optical lattice experiments. Motivated by this proposal, we investigate in more detail, the behavior of the ground-state energy per site as a function of trap size(L) and confining potential (V(x) = t(x/L)^alpha) in the one-dimensional case. Using the BALDA-DFT method, we find signatures of critical behavior as alpha goes to infinity.

4 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses elsart5p.cls, elsart.cls, submitted as proceeding to SCES-08 (Strongly Correlated Electron Systems Meeting of 2008)

References in corpus (2)

• Quantitative determination of the Hubbard model phase diagram from optical lattice experiments by two-parameter scaling
• Time of flight observables and the formation of Mott domains of fermions and bosons on optical lattices

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Hubbard Dimer: A density functional case study of a many-body problem
• Density-functional theory approach to the thermodynamics of the harmonically confined one-dimensional Hubbard model
• Thermal versus Quantum Fluctuations of Optical Lattice Fermions