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

该奖项支持乔治梅森大学研究人员P. Nikolic和乔治敦大学研究人员M. Rigol的合作。超冷原子是一种新的物理系统，其性质可以由许多相互作用的粒子的相关行为来决定。在任何其他系统中可能难以获得的相关量子态的理论发现和表征是本项目的基本目的。主要的焦点是非常规的成对绝缘体和由光学晶格中近共振相互作用稳定的超流体。利用理论上易于处理且在超冷原子实验室中常规实现的简单微观模型，本研究将推进原子物理背景下的多体量子理论，并分析复杂固态材料中常见的相关性的出现。我们对高温超导的理解有望受益于本研究的跨学科性质，而结果将在量子工程和高精度测量中具有潜在的应用。乔治梅森大学和乔治敦大学位于华盛顿特区市区，这将使本项目的广泛推广工作受益。科学展览和公开讲座等机会将被用来吸引来自北弗吉尼亚的高中生和本科生追求科学和工程方面的高等教育和职业，以及参与资助的研究项目。通过调查人员？此外，该项目还将使从事该项目的学生获得国家标准与技术研究所和约翰霍普金斯大学的合作机会。这笔拨款将进一步促进乔治梅森大学和乔治城大学在原子和凝聚态理论方面的高级研究项目的建立，并促进两个小组之间的紧密合作。两所大学的研究生将接受高性能计算方面的培训，并将获得在美国高性能计算中心进行高度并行计算的经验。

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.