Realizing discontinuous quantum phase transitions in a strongly-correlated driven optical lattice

Abstract

Discontinuous quantum phase transitions and the associated metastability play central roles in diverse areas of physics ranging from ferromagnetism to false vacuum decay in the early universe. Using strongly-interacting ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, we realize a driven many-body system whose quantum phase transition can be tuned from continuous to discontinuous. Resonant shaking of a one-dimensional optical lattice hybridizes the lowest two Bloch bands, driving a novel transition from a Mott insulator to a $\pi$-superfluid, i.e., a superfluid state with staggered phase order. For weak shaking amplitudes, this transition is discontinuous (first-order) and the system can remain frozen in a metastable state, whereas for strong shaking, it undergoes a continuous transition toward a $\pi$-superfluid. Our observations of this metastability and hysteresis are in good quantitative agreement with numerical simulations and pave the way for exploring the crucial role of quantum fluctuations in discontinuous transitions.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary

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Cited by in corpus (22)

• Observation of false vacuum decay via bubble formation in ferromagnetic superfluids
• Interface dynamics in the two-dimensional quantum Ising model
• Counterdiabatic Driving for Periodically Driven Systems
• Analog vacuum decay from vacuum initial conditions
• False vacuum decay and nucleation dynamics in neutral atom systems
• Monte Carlo matrix-product-state approach to the false vacuum decay in the monitored quantum Ising chain
• Unravelling Metastable Markovian Open Quantum Systems
• Generalized cold-atom simulators for vacuum decay
• Floquet-heating-induced Bose condensation in a scar-like mode of an open driven optical-lattice system
• Suppression of inter-band heating for random driving
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• Spectroscopic evidence for engineered hadron formation in repulsive fermionic $\text{SU}(N)$ Hubbard Models
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