Interacting Fermi Gases in Disordered One-Dimensional Lattices

Abstract

Interacting two-component Fermi gases loaded in a one-dimensional (1D) lattice and subject to harmonic trapping exhibit intriguing compound phases in which fluid regions coexist with local Mott-insulator and/or band-insulator regions. Motivated by experiments on cold atoms inside disordered optical lattices, we present a theoretical study of the effects of a random potential on these ground-state phases. Within a density-functional scheme we show that disorder has two main effects: (i) it destroys the local insulating regions if it is sufficiently strong compared with the on-site atom-atom repulsion, and (ii) it induces an anomaly in the compressibility at low density from quenching of percolation.

7 pages, 4 figures, submitted

References in corpus (4)

• Local quantum criticality in confined fermions on optical lattices
• Quantum Monte Carlo study of confined fermions in one-dimensional optical lattices
• Pauli spin susceptibility of a strongly correlated two-dimensional electron liquid
• Signature of Mott-insulator transition with ultra-cold fermions in a one-dimensional optical lattice

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Luther-Emery Phase and Atomic-Density Waves in a Trapped Fermion Gas
• Collective excitations in one-dimensional ultracold Fermi gases: a comparative study
• Effects of disorder on atomic density waves and spin-singlet dimers in one-dimensional optical lattices
• Phases of Bosons or Fermions in confined optical lattices
• Hole Localization in One-Dimensional Doped Anderson-Hubbard Model