Condensed Matter Physics With Light And Atoms: Strongly Correlated Cold Fermions in Optical Lattices

TL;DR

This paper explores the intersection of condensed matter physics and ultra-cold fermionic atoms in optical lattices, discussing models, phase transitions, magnetic phenomena, cooling techniques, and measurement methods relevant to strongly correlated systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental approaches to studying strongly correlated cold fermions in optical lattices, highlighting new insights into Mott physics and quantum magnetism.

Findings

Interaction effects can facilitate adiabatic cooling.

Lattice frustration helps reveal Mott physics.

Measurement techniques like stimulated Raman scattering probe quasiparticles.

Abstract

Various topics at the interface between condensed matter physics and the physics of ultra-cold fermionic atoms in optical lattices are discussed. The lectures start with basic considerations on energy scales, and on the regimes in which a description by an effective Hubbard model is valid. Qualitative ideas about the Mott transition are then presented, both for bosons and fermions, as well as mean-field theories of this phenomenon. Antiferromagnetism of the fermionic Hubbard model at half-filling is briefly reviewed. The possibility that interaction effects facilitate adiabatic cooling is discussed, and the importance of using entropy as a thermometer is emphasized. Geometrical frustration of the lattice, by suppressing spin long-range order, helps revealing genuine Mott physics and exploring unconventional quantum magnetism. The importance of measurement techniques to probe quasiparticle excitations in cold fermionic systems is emphasized, and a recent proposal based on stimulated Raman scattering briefly reviewed. The unconventional nature of these excitations in cuprate superconductors is emphasized.