Counterflow Superfluidity of Two-Species Ultracold Atoms in a Commensurate Optical Lattice

Abstract

In the Mott-insulator regime, two species of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice can exhibit the low-energy counterflow motion. We construct effective Hamiltonians for the three classes of the two-species (fermion-fermion, boson-boson, and boson-fermion–type) insulators and reveal the conditions when the resulting ground state supports super-counter-fluidity (SCF), with the alternative being phase segregation. We emphasize a crucial role of breaking the isotopic symmetry between the species for realizing the SCF phase.