Quasi-periodic moiré patterns and dimensional localizations in twisted three-dimensional optical lattices

Recent advances in spin-dependent optical lattices Meng et al., Nature 615, 231 (2023) have enabled the experimental implementation of two superimposed three-dimensional lattices, presenting new opportunities to investigate three-dimensional moiré physics in ultracold atomic gases. This work studies the moiré physics of atoms within a spin-dependent cubic lattice with relative twists along different directions. It is discovered that dimensionality significantly influences the low-energy moiré physics. From a geometric perspective, this manifests in the observation that moiré patterns, generated by rotating lattices along different axes, can exhibit either periodic or quasi-periodic behavior—a feature not present in two-dimensional systems. We develop a low-energy effective theory applicable to systems with arbitrary rotation axes and small rotation angles. This theory elucidates the emergence of quasi-periodicity in three dimensions and demonstrates its correlation with the arithmetic properties of the rotation axes. Numerical analyses reveal that these quasi-periodic moiré potentials can lead to distinctive dimensional localization behaviors of atoms, manifesting as localized wave functions in planar or linear configurations.