Achieving the Neel state in an optical lattice

Arnaud Koetsier, R. A. Duine, Immanuel Bloch, H. T. C. Stoof

Published 2007-11-21, updated 2008-02-26Version 2

We theoretically study the possibility of reaching the antiferromagnetic phase of the Hubbard model by starting from a normal gas of trapped fermionic atoms and adiabatically ramping up an optical lattice. Requirements on the initial temperature and the number of atoms are determined for a three dimensional square lattice by evaluating the Neel state entropy, taking into account fluctuations around the mean-field solution. We find that these fluctuations place important limitations on adiabatically reaching the Neel state.