Quantitative determination of the Hubbard model phase diagram from optical lattice experiments by two-parameter scaling

We propose an experiment to obtain the phase diagram of the fermionic Hubbard model, for any dimensionality, using cold atoms in optical lattices. It is based on measuring the total energy for a sequence of trap profiles. It combines finite-size scaling with an additional “finite-curvature scaling” necessary to reach the homogeneous limit. We illustrate its viability in the 1D case, simulating experimental data in the Bethe-ansatz local-density approximation. Including experimental errors, the filling corresponding to the Mott transition can be determined with better than 3% accuracy.