Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.

September 22, 2005
12:30 PM

Jakub M. Zakrzewski,
Marin Smoluchowski Institute of Physics

Cold atomic gases in optical lattices with disorder

Abstract

Cold atomic gases placed in optical lattices enable studies of simple condensed matter theory models with parameters that may be tuned quite easily. Changing the depth of optical potential quantum phase transitions may be realized. However, ean field simulation of experiments reveals subtleties in their interpretation. When the optical potential is randomized (e.g. using laser speckle to create a random intensity distribution) one may be able to observe Anderson localization of matter waves for non-interacting bosons, the so called Bose glass in the presence of interactions, as well as the Fermi glass or quantum spin glass for mixtures of fermions and bosons. Details of current experiments and associated problems are discussed.