Metal-Insulator Transition Revisited for Cold Atoms in Non-Abelian Gauge Potentials

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of realizing metal-insulator transitions with ultracold atoms in two-dimensional optical lattices in the presence of artificial gauge potentials. Such transitions have been extensively studied for magnetic fields corresponding to Abelian gauges; they occur when the magnetic flux penetrating the lattice plaquette is an irrational multiple of the magnetic flux quantum. Here we present the first study of these transitions for non-Abelian U(2) gauge fields, which can be realized with atoms with two pairs of degenerate internal states. In contrast to the Abelian case, the spectrum and localization transition in the non-Abelian case is strongly influenced by atomic momenta. In addition to determining the localization boundary, the momentum fragments the spectrum and the minimum energy viewed as a function of momentum exhibits a step structure. Other key characteristics of the non-Abelian case include the absence of localization for certain states and satellite fringes around the Bragg peaks in the momentum distribution and an interesting possibility that the transition can be tuned by the atomic momenta.

arXiv comment4 pages, 4 figures, see http://physics.gmu.edu/~isatija/recentpub.htm for high resolution figures

References in corpus (9)

• Quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator in a gas of ultracold atoms
• Creation of effective magnetic fields in optical lattices: The Hofstadter butterfly for cold neutral atoms
• Non-Abelian gauge potentials for ultra-cold atoms with degenerate dark states
• Fractional quantum Hall states of atoms in optical Lattices
• Cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials: From the Hofstadter "moth" to lattice gauge theory
• Artificial electromagnetism for neutral atoms: Escher staircase and Laughlin liquids
• Ultracold atoms confined in an optical lattice plus parabolic potential: a closed-form approach
• Localization Transition in Incommensurate non-Hermitian Systems
• Self-Similarity and Localization

Cited by in corpus (39)

• Ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices: mimicking condensed matter physics and beyond
• Degenerate Quantum Gases with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Spin-Orbit Coupled Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Realistic Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Neutral Atoms
• Engineering Time-Reversal Invariant Topological Insulators With Ultra-Cold Atoms
• Spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Non-Abelian optical lattices: Anomalous quantum Hall effect and Dirac Fermions
• Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensate under Rotation
• Vortices in spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Vortex structures of rotating spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Topological states in two-dimensional optical lattices
• Dirac Equation For Cold Atoms In Artificial Curved Spacetimes
• Non-equilibrium spin dynamics in a trapped Fermi gas with effective spin-orbit interaction
• Topological Insulators and Metals in Atomic Optical Lattices
• Emergent patterns in a spin-orbit coupled spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensate
• Rydberg-Atom Quantum Simulation and Chern Number Characterization of a Topological Mott Insulator
• Time-Reversal-Invariant Hofstadter-Hubbard Model with Ultracold Fermions
• Topological phase transitions in the non-Abelian honeycomb lattice
• Spin-orbit coupling induced fractionalized Skyrmion excitations in rotating and rapidly quenched spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates
• Double and negative reflection of cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials
• Quantum phase transition of ultracold bosons in the presence of a non-Abelian synthetic gauge field
• Non-abelian anyons from degenerate Landau levels of ultracold atoms in artificial gauge potentials
• Two-Dimensional Electron Gas with Cold Atoms in Non-Abelian Gauge Potentials
• Landau levels of cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge fields
• Correlated Topological Phases and Exotic Magnetism with Ultracold Fermions
• Quantum Hall-like effect for cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials
• Non-Abelian generalization of non-Hermitian quasicrystal: PT-symmetry breaking, localization, entanglement and topological transitions
• Artificial $SU(3)$ Spin-Orbit Coupling and Exotic Mott Insulators
• Ultracold atoms in U(2) non-Abelian gauge potentials preserving the Landau levels
• Superfluid-Insulator transition of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice in the presence of a synthetic magnetic field
• Detecting unambiguously non-Abelian geometric phases with trapped ions
• Spatial patterns in optical lattices submitted to gauge potentials
• Ultracold bosons in a synthetic periodic magnetic field: Mott phases and re-entrant superfluid-insulator transitions
• Non-Abelian gauge potential driven localization transition in quasiperiodic optical lattices
• Thermal transitions of the modulated superfluid for spin-orbit coupled correlated bosons in an optical lattice
• Bose-Einstein Condensates in Non-abelian Gauge Fields
• Universal properties of boundary and interface charges in multichannel one-dimensional continuum models
• Spin-orbit coupled mean-field Bose gas at finite temperature
• Thermal Casimir effect in the spin-orbit coupled Bose gas