Interaction-induced chiral px ± ipy superfluid order of bosons in an optical lattice

The study of superconductivity with unconventional order is complicated in condensed matter systems by their extensive complexity. Optical lattices with their exceptional precision and control allow one to emulate superfluidity avoiding many of the complications of condensed matter. A promising appr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New Journal of Physics
Main Authors: M Ölschläger, T Kock, G Wirth, A Ewerbeck, C Morais Smith, A Hemmerich
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2013
Subjects:
Q
IPY
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/15/8/083041
https://doaj.org/article/475ceef01ea044228cf790bd5447f392
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Summary:The study of superconductivity with unconventional order is complicated in condensed matter systems by their extensive complexity. Optical lattices with their exceptional precision and control allow one to emulate superfluidity avoiding many of the complications of condensed matter. A promising approach to realize unconventional superfluid order is to employ orbital degrees of freedom in higher Bloch bands. In recent work, indications were found that bosons condensed in the second band of an optical chequerboard lattice might exhibit p _x ± i p _y order. Here we present experiments, which provide strong evidence for the emergence of p _x ± i p _y order driven by the interaction in the local p-orbitals. We compare our observations with a multi-band Hubbard model and find excellent quantitative agreement.