2006/12/04 by Tommaso Roscilde, J. I. Cirac, J. Ignacio Cirac · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Feshbach resonance #Ground state #Metastability #Monte Carlo method #Phase (matter) #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Monte Carlo #Quantum mechanics #Quantum phase transition #Random lasers and scattering media #Statistical physics #Superfluidity #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.98.190402
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 190402 (2007) · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2006/12/04 · openalex publication_date 2007/05/10 · arxiv updated 2010/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We numerically investigate mixtures of two interacting bosonic species with unequal parameters in one-dimensional optical lattices. In large parameter regions full phase segregation is seen to minimize the energy of the system, but the true ground state is masked by an exponentially large number of metastable states characterized by microscopic phase separation. The ensemble of these quantum emulsion states, reminiscent of emulsions of immiscible fluids, has macroscopic properties analogous to those of a Bose glass, namely, a finite compressibility in absence of superfluidity. Their metastability is probed by extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations generating rich correlated stochastic dynamics. The tuning of the repulsion of one of the two species via a Feshbach resonance drives the system through a quantum phase transition to the superfluid state.