2018/08/16 by Rashi Sachdeva, Friederike Metz, Manpreet Singh +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.98.063612
published as Phys. Rev. A 98, 063612 (2018) · 9 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2018/08/16 · arxiv updated 2018/12/12
We investigate the ground state properties of ultracold atoms trapped in a two-leg ladder potential in the presence of an artificial magnetic field in a staggered configuration. We focus on the strongly interacting regime and use the Landau theory of phase transitions and a mean field Gutzwiller variational method to identify the stable superfluid phases and their boundaries with the Mott-insulator regime as a function of magnetic flux. In addition, we calculate the local and chiral currents of these superfluid phases, which show a staggered vortex anti-vortex configuration. The analytical results are confirmed by numerical simulations using a cluster mean-field theory approach.