Recovery of Hidden Interference in Mott Insulators

Abstract

Particle statistics plays a crucial role in a strongly interacting quantum many-body system. Here, we study the Hubbard model for distinguishable particles at unit filling. Starting from the superfluid-like state in the strong tunneling limit and gradually reducing the tunneling so that the on-site repulsive interaction dominates, the state ends up in a symmetric superposition of Mott insulator states. This result can be experimentally confirmed by the recovery of interference patterns in the density correlation functions. We also show that this state is a maximally entangled state, in contrast to the standard picture.