Time of flight observables and the formation of Mott domains of fermions and bosons on optical lattices

Abstract

We study, using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, the energetics of the formation of Mott domains of fermions and bosons trapped on one-dimensional lattices. We show that, in both cases, the sum of kinetic and interaction energies exhibits minima when Mott domains appear in the trap. In addition, we examine the derivatives of the kinetic and interaction energies, and of their sum, which display clear signatures of the Mott transition. We discuss the relevance of these findings to time-of-flight experiments that could allow the detection of the metal--Mott-insulator transition in confined fermions on optical lattices, and support established results on the superfluid--Mott-insulator transition in confined bosons on optical lattices.

5 pages, 6 figures, published version

References in corpus (7)

• Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms
• Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of confined bosonic atoms in optical lattices
• Local quantum criticality in confined fermions on optical lattices
• Spatial correlations of trapped 1d bosons in an optical lattice
• Quantum Monte Carlo study of confined fermions in one-dimensional optical lattices
• Signature of Mott-insulator transition with ultra-cold fermions in a one-dimensional optical lattice
• Numerical simulations of strongly correlated fermions confined in 1D optical lattices

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• Mott transition of fermionic atoms in a three-dimensional optical trap
• Generalized Dynamical Mean-Field Theory for Bose-Fermi Mixtures in Optical Lattices
• Quantitative determination of the Hubbard model phase diagram from optical lattice experiments by two-parameter scaling