Ultracold dipolar gases in optical lattices

This tutorial is a theoretical work, in which we study the physics of ultra-cold dipolar bosonic gases in optical lattices. Such gases consist of bosonic atoms or molecules that interact via dipolar forces, and that are cooled below the quantum degeneracy temperature, typically in the nK range. When such a degenerate quantum gas is loaded into an optical lattice produced by standing waves of laser light, new kinds of physical phenomena occur. Then, these systems realize extended Hubbard-type models, and can be brought to a strongly correlated regime. The physical properties of such gases, dominated by the long-range, anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, are discussed using the mean-field approximations and exact quantum Monte Carlo techniques (the worm algorithm). © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd.