Correlations and thermalization in 1D atomic gases

01.07.2010 - 31.08.2014
Research funding project
Correlations and coherence are important features of many-body (quantum) systems. Reduced dimensionality usually enhances the correlations, and often paves the way to analytic treatment of important fundamental aspects of the quantum system. Therefore one-dimensional (1D) systems are of great importance in many-body quantum theory. Relevant models, such as Lieb-Liniger, Gaudin-Yang, sine-Gordon or Hubbard, provide deep insight into many-body physics in general. They also establish theoretical concepts that can be further extended to non-ideal experimental settings and towards 2D and 3D systems. All experiments are carried out in a 3D world, and an important question that arises is to which extent is 1D physics applicable in the real 3D world implementation of 1D systems. To study the conditions and limits of one-dimensionality in ultracold-atom (bosonic) systems in elongated traps is the general goal of the proposed project. This physical system is especially interesting because there exist well-established experimental techniques for preparation, control and measurement, and new ones are steadily emerging. The goal of the present project is to bring together the theory of 1D systems with these powerful experimental techniques to probe many-body quantum effects and put our knowledge on low-dimensional quantum systems to a stringent test. For that we will have to adapt and develop novel theoretical methods to allow to describe realistic experimental setups, which are not fully 1D, which are at finite temperature, and which allow to probe non-equilibrium properties. The proposed research will test one-dimensional theory models on a real-world 3D implementation of (quasi) 1D systems using ultracold atoms. We expect that this project will yield insight into the applicability of reduced analytical models also for other physical realizations and device new methods for their characterizations.

People

Project leader

Project personnel

Institute

Grant funds

  • FWF - Österr. Wissenschaftsfonds (National) Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Research focus

  • Quantum many-body systems: 80%
  • Modeling and Simulation: 20%

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Korrelationencorrelations
ultrakalte Quantengasenultra-cold quantum gases
eindimensionale Systemeone-dimensional systems
Thermalisierungthermalization
Vielteilchen-Quantentheoriemany-body quantum theory

Publications