Trapping polar molecules by surface acoustic waves

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to trap and arrange polar molecules using surface acoustic waves and electrical forces on piezoelectric materials, enabling control over quantum phases like superfluid and Mott insulator.

Contribution

The study presents a new technique to trap polar molecules in lattice structures using SAW-induced electrical fields, facilitating quantum simulation of the Bose-Hubbard model.

Findings

SAW-induced electrical fields can trap polar molecules in lattice configurations.

The method allows modulation of phase transitions between superfluid and Mott insulator.

Trapped molecule arrangements influence the energy and localization in the Bose-Hubbard model.

Abstract

We propose a method to trap polar molecules with the electrical force induced by the surface acoustic wave (SAW) on piezoelectric materials. In this approach, the electrical force is perpendicular to the moving direction of the polar molecules, and is used to control the positions of trapped polar molecules in the direction orthogonal to the acoustic transmission. By virtue of an external electrical force, the SAW-induced electrical field can trap the polar molecules into single-layer or multi-layer lattices. The arrangement of molecules can affect the binding energy and localization of the molecule array. Then the one- or two-dimensional trapped polar molecule arrays can be used to construct the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model, whose energy and dynamics are affected by the localizations of the trapped molecules. We find that the phase transitions between the superfluid and Mott insulator based on trapped polar molecule BH model can be modulated by the SAW induced electrical potential.