Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 57: Kalte Atome
Q 57.6: Talk
Friday, March 16, 2012, 12:00–12:15, V7.02
Ultracold atoms in a disordered quantum potential — •Hessam Habibian1,2, Simone Paganelli1, and Giovanna Morigi1,2 — 1Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain — 2Universität des Saarlandes, Germany
Self-organization of matter has been reported in experiments confining atomic gases in high-Q cavities [1]. When the atoms scatter laser photons into the cavity mode, they can form periodic patterns that maximize elastic scattering into the cavity [2]. It was predicted that the quantum ground state of these patterns can exhibit the properties of a Mott-Insulator state [3]. Here, we consider the case in which the atoms are confined along the cavity axis by classical fields and scatter laser photons into a cavity mode but, contrarily with previous works, we assume that the lattice periodicity and the phase of the scattered field are incommensurate. The model thus exhibits disorder whose features depend on the atomic density and on the pump laser intensity. We identify the regimes where the ground state is either incompressible or compressible. In the latter case we study when the atomic phase is a Bose glass and when it is a superfluid.
[1] A. Black, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 203001 (2003); K. Baumann, et al., Nature 464, 1301 (2010).
[2] P. Domokos, H. Ritsch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 253003 (2002).
[3] S. Fernandez-Vidal, et al., Phys. Rev. A 81, 043407 (2010).