Measuring the Edwards-Anderson order parameter of the Bose glass: a quantum gas microscope approach

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that quantum gas microscopes can be used to directly detect the Bose glass phase and measure the Edwards-Anderson order parameter in strongly correlated disordered quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical approach to simulate fluorescence microscopy images and proposes experimental modifications for measuring the Edwards-Anderson order parameter.

Findings

Simulated density distributions match experimental fluorescence images.

Unambiguous detection of the Bose glass phase is feasible.

Experimental protocols for measuring the Edwards-Anderson order parameter are proposed.

Abstract

With the advent of spatially resolved fluorescence imaging in quantum gas microscopes, it is now possible to directly image glassy phases and probe the local effects of disorder in a highly controllable setup. Here we present numerical calculations using a spatially-resolved local mean-field theory, show that it captures the essential physics of the disordered system and use it to simulate the density distributions seen in single-shot fluorescence microscopy. From these simulated images we extract local properties of the phases which are measurable by a quantum gas microscope and show that unambiguous detection of the Bose glass is possible. In particular, we show that experimental determination of the Edwards-Anderson order parameter is possible in a strongly correlated quantum system using existing experiments. We also suggest modifications to the experiments which will allow further properties of the Bose glass to be measured.