Achieving the Néel state in an optical lattice

Abstract

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 Néel state entropy, taking into account fluctuations around the mean-field solution. We find that these fluctuations place important limitations on adiabatically reaching the Néel state.