Collaborative Research: Correlated Superfluids and Insulators of Ultracold Fermionic Atomic Gases

George Mason University, Fairfax VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the collaboration between researchers P. Nikolic at George Mason University and M. Rigol at Georgetown University. Ultracold atoms are a novel physical system whose properties can be dominated by a correlated behavior of many interacting particles. The theoretical discovery and characterization of correlated quantum states that may be difficult to obtain in any other system is the fundamental purpose of this project. The main focus are unconventional paired insulators and superfluids stabilized by nearly resonant interactions in optical lattices. Using simple microscopic models that are theoretically tractable and routinely realized in ultracold atom laboratories, this research will advance the many-body quantum theory in the atomic physics context, and analyze the emergence of correlations commonly found in complicated solid state materials. Our understanding of high temperature superconductivity is expected to benefit from the inter-disciplinary nature of this research, while the results will have potential applications to quantum engineering and high-precision measurements. A broad outreach effort included in this project will benefit from the location of George Mason and Georgetown Universities in the metropolitan Washington DC area. Opportunities such as science fairs and public lectures will be used to attract high school and undergraduate students from Northern Virginia to pursue higher education and careers in science and engineering, as well as participate in the funded research projects. Through the investigators? external affiliations, this project will also expose the students working on it to collaborative opportunities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University. This grant will further facilitate the building of advanced research programs in atomic and condensed matter theory at George Mason and Georgetown universities, and tight collaboration between the two groups. Graduate students at both universities will receive training in high performance computing, and will gain experience performing highly parallel calculations in high performance computing centers within the US.