Adiabatic cooling of fermions in an optical lattice

Abstract

The entropy-temperature curves are calculated for non-interacting fermions in a 3D optical lattice. These curves facilitate understanding of how adiabatic changes in the lattice depth affect the temperature, and we demonstrate regimes where the atomic sample can be significantly heated or cooled. When the Fermi energy of the system is near the location of a band gap the cooling regimes disappear for all temperatures and the system can only be heated by lattice loading. For samples with greater than one fermion per site we find that lattice loading can lead to a large increase in the degeneracy of the system. We study the scaling properties of the system in the degenerate regimes and assess the effects of non-adiabatic loading.

Interaction-induced adiabatic cooling for antiferromagnetism in optical lattices

“…This is the mechanism discussed in Ref. [5]. At V 0 < 2.3E R , (not on the figure) heating can also occur.…”

Domain-wall dynamics in a two-component Bose-Mott insulator

“…The latter authors [9] also proposed a scheme where one reduces the entropy per particle in the region of interest by introducing a deformation in the confining trapping potential as well as pointing out possible issues regarding heating while loading into an optical lattice [10]. Bezett and Blakie [11] have performed a study of the adiabatic pathways for cooling fermions loaded into a three-dimensional optical lattice. J. Catani et al [12] proposed using species-selective trapping potentials to transfer entropy * Electronic address: ssn8@cornell.edu † Electronic address: em256@cornell.edu from the target species to the auxillary species.…”

Symplectic Fermi liquid and its realization in cold atomic systems

“…There are two isotopes which are fermions: 171,173 Yb, with nuclear spin equal to 1/2 and 5/2, respectively. These would realize SU (2) and SU(6) symmetries, respectively.…”

“…The experimental control we have over cold atoms allow us to construct systems with symmetries which are larger than the ones naturally present in matter. The study of systems with enlarged symmetries is in principle very attractive: these have larger degeneracies, which can be used to the experimentalists' advantage in adiabatic cooling in order to achieve low temperatures more effectively [1][2][3] ; also, the enhancement of quantum fluctuations and the presence of more degrees of freedom provide theorists with the possibility to study new phases of matter 4 .…”