Ultracold Gases of Ytterbium: Ferromagnetism and Mott States in an SU(6) Fermi System
M. A. Cazalilla, A. F. Ho, M. Ueda
备注：
4+ pages, 1 figure; v2: Improved discussion of the SU(6) symmetry-breaking patterns; v3: added further discussion on the order of the transition. Added References
It is argued that ultracold quantum degenerate gas of ytterbium $^{173}$Yb atoms having nuclear spin $I = 5/2$ exhibits an enlarged SU$(6)$ symmetry. Within the Landau Fermi liquid theory, stability criteria against Fermi liquid (Pomeranchuk) instabilities in the spin channel are considered. Focusing on the SU$(n > 2)$ generalizations of ferromagnetism, it is shown within mean-field theory that the transition from the paramagnet to the itinerant ferromagnet is generically first order. On symmetry grounds, general SU$(n)$ itinerant ferromagnetic ground states and their topological excitations are also discussed. These SU$(n > 2)$ ferromagnets can become stable by increasing the scattering length using optical methods or in an optical lattice. However, in an optical lattice at current experimental temperatures, Mott states with different filling are expected to coexist in the same trap, as obtained from a calculation based on the SU$(6)$ Hubbard model.
Can a gas of spin-up and spin-down fermions become ferromagnetic due to repulsive interactions? This question which has not yet found a definitive theoretical answer was addressed in an experiment with an ultracold two-component Fermi gas. The observation of non-monotonic behavior of lifetime, kinetic energy, and size for increasing repulsive interactions provides strong evidence for a phase transition to a ferromagnetic state. It implies that itinerant ferromagnetism of delocalized fermions is possible without lattice and band structure and validates the most basic model for ferromagnetism in…
Ho claims in his comment that our experiment is direct evidence that itinerant ferromagnetism does not exist in ultracold Fermi gases. This claim is incorrect and based on an invalid estimate of relaxation times and an erroneous interpretation of the detectability of ferromagnetic domains. We point out that the experimental evidence is consistent with the existence of ferromagnetism, but further experiments are needed to distinguish a ferromagnetic ground state from a non-magnetic ground state with ferromagnetic correlations.
We theoretically investigate the itinerant ferromagnetic transition of a spherically trapped ultracold Fermi gas with spin imbalance under strongly repulsive interatomic interactions. Our study is based on a self-consistent solution of the Hartree-Fock mean-field equations beyond the widely used local density approximation. We demonstrate that, while the local density approximation holds in the paramagnetic phase, after the ferromagnetic transition it leads to a quantitative discrepancy in various thermodynamic quantities even with large atom numbers. We determine the position of the phase tra…
Itinerant ferromagnetism in cold Fermi gases with repulsive interactions is studied applying the Jastrow-Slater approximation generalized to finite polarization and temperature. For two components at zero temperature a second order transition is found at $ak_F\simeq0.90$ compatible with QMC. Thermodynamic functions and observables such as the compressibility and spin susceptibility and the resulting fluctuations in number and spin are calculated. For trapped gases the resulting cloud radii and kinetic energies are calculated and compared to recent experiments. Spin polarized systems are recomm…
In this review, we discuss the properties of a few impurity atoms immersed in a gas of ultracold fermions, the so-called Fermi polaron problem. On one side, this many-body system is appealing because it can be described almost exactly with simple diagrammatic and/or variational theoretical approaches. On the other, it provides quantitatively reliable insight into the phase diagram of strongly interacting population imbalanced quantum mixtures. In particular, we show that the polaron problem can be applied to study itinerant ferromagnetism, a long standing problem in quantum mechanics.
We develop an optical lattice system for an ultracold atomic gas mixture of ytterbium (174Yb) and lithium (6Li), which is an ideal system to study disorder and impurity problems. We load a Bose-Einstein condensate of 174Yb into a three-dimensional optical lattice and observe the interference patterns in time-of-flight (TOF) images. Furthermore, we perform a laser spectroscopy of 174Yb in an optical lattice using the ultra-narrow optical transition 1S0-3P2 in both cases with and without 6Li. Due to the weak interspecies interaction, we do not observe the clear influences of 6Li in the obtained …
We report a high-resolution microscope system for imaging ultracold ytterbium atoms trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By using the ultraviolet strong transition combined with a solid immersion lens and high-resolution optics, our system resolved individual sites in an optical lattice with a 544-nm spacing. Without any cooling mechanism during the imaging process, the deep potential required to contain the atoms was realized using a combination of a shallow ground-state and a deep excited-state potentials. The lifetime and limitations of this setup were studied in detail.
We report on the first experimental setup based on a 2D-/3D-MOT scheme to create both Bose-Einstein condensates and degenerate Fermi gases of several ytterbium isotopes. Our setup does not require a Zeeman slower and offers the flexibility to simultaneously produce ultracold samples of other atomic species. Furthermore, the extraordinary optical access favors future experiments in optical lattices. A 2D-MOT on the strong 1S0-1P1 transition captures ytterbium directly from a dispenser of atoms and loads a 3D-MOT on the narrow 1S0-3P1 intercombination transition. Subsequently, atoms are transfer…
We develop a non-Hermitian effective theory for a repulsively interacting Fermi gas in the excited branch. The on-shell $T$-matrix is employed as a complex-valued interaction term, which describes a repulsive interaction between atoms in the excited branch and a two-body inelastic decay to the attractive branch. To see the feature of this model, we have addressed, in the weak coupling regime, the excitation properties of a repulsive Fermi polaron as well as the time-dependent number density. The analytic expressions obtained for these quantities qualitatively show a good agreement with recent …
Motivated by the first experimental evidence of ferromagnetic behavior in a three-dimensional ultracold atomic gas, we explore the possibility of itinerant ferromagnetism in a trapped two-dimensional atomic gas. Firstly, we develop a formalism that demonstrates how quantum fluctuations drive the ferromagnetic reconstruction first order, and consider the consequences of an imposed population imbalance. Secondly, we adapt this formalism to elucidate the key experimental signatures of ferromagnetism in a realistic trapped geometry.
Alongside superfluidity, itinerant (Stoner) ferromagnetism remains one of the most well-characterized phases of correlated Fermi systems. A recent experiment has reported the first evidence for novel phase behavior on the repulsive side of the Feshbach resonance in a two-component ultracold Fermi gas. By adapting recent theoretical studies to the atomic trap geometry, we show that an adiabatic ferromagnetic transition would take place at a weaker interaction strength than is observed in experiment. This discrepancy motivates a simple non-equilibrium theory that takes account of the dynamics of…
A recent experiment has provided the first evidence for itinerant ferromagnetism in an ultracold atomic gas of fermions with repulsive interactions. However, the gas in this regime is also subject to significant three-body loss. We adopt an extended Hertz-Millis theory to account for the effect of loss on the transition and on the ferromagnetic state. We find that the losses damp quantum fluctuations and thereby significantly increase the critical interaction strength needed to induce ferromagnetism. This effect may resolve a discrepancy between the experiment and previous theoretical predicti…
Itinerant ferromagnetism, i.e. spontaneous polarization of non-localized particles, is expected to occur for strong repulsive interactions in a spin-1/2 Fermi system. However, this state has proven notoriously hard to find experimentally, both in ultracold gases and in solids. This raises questions about the stability of the itinerant ferromagnetic state itself. Here we develop a new approach to describe both the direct and exchange interactions for a general interaction potential in the path-integral formalism and we apply this method to itinerant ferromagnetism in three-dimensional ultracold…
We investigate ferromagnetic ordering in an itinerant ultracold atomic Fermi gas with repulsive interactions and population imbalance. In a spatially uniform system, we show that at zero temperature the transition to the itinerant magnetic phase transforms from first to second order with increasing population imbalance. Drawing on these results, we elucidate the phases present in a trapped geometry, finding three characteristic types of behavior with changing population imbalance. Finally, we outline the potential experimental implications of the findings.
We propose a controllable method for observing interaction induced ferromagnetism in ultracold fermionic atoms loaded in optical superlattices. We first discuss how to probe and control Nagaoka ferromagnetism in an array of isolated plaquettes (four lattice sites arranged in a square). Next, we show that introducing a weak interplaquette coupling destroys the ferromagnetic correlations. To overcome this instability we propose to mediate long-range ferromagnetic correlations among the plaquettes via double-exchange processes. Conditions for experimental realization and techniques to detect such…
We review recent experimental and theoretical progress on ultracold alkaline-earth Fermi gases with emergent SU$(N)$ symmetry. Emphasis is placed on describing the ground-breaking experimental achievements of recent years. The latter include the cooling to below quantum degeneracy of various isotopes of ytterbium and strontium, the demonstration of optical Feshbach resonances and the optical Stern-Gerlach effect, the realization of a Mott insulator of $^{173}$Yb atoms, the creation of various kinds of Fermi-Bose mixtures and the observation of many-body physics in optical lattice clocks. On th…
We study the quench dynamics of a two-component ultracold Fermi gas from the weak into the strong interaction regime, where the short time dynamics are governed by the exponential growth rate of unstable collective modes. We obtain an effective interaction that takes into account both Pauli blocking and the energy dependence of the scattering amplitude near a Feshbach resonance. Using this interaction we analyze the competing instabilities towards Stoner ferromagnetism and pairing.
We investigate two-component ultracold fermions loaded into a decorated square lattice, which are described by the Hubbard model with repulsive interactions and nearest neighbor hoppings. By combining the real-space dynamical mean-field theory with the numerical renormalization group method, we discuss how a ferromagnetically ordered ground state in the weak coupling regime, which originates from the existence of a dispersionless band, is adiabatically connected to a Heisenberg ferrimagnetic state in the strong coupling limit. The effects of level splitting and hopping imbalance are also addre…
We present a scheme that produces a strong U(1)-like gauge field on cold atoms confined in a two-dimensional square optical lattice. Our proposal relies on two essential features, a long-lived metastable excited state that exists for alkaline-earth or Ytterbium atoms, and an optical superlattice. As in the proposal by Jaksch and Zoller [New Journal of Physics 5, 56 (2003)], laser-assisted tunneling between adjacent sites creates an effective magnetic field. In the tight-binding approximation, the atomic motion is described by the Harper Hamiltonian, with a flux across each lattice plaquette th…
We report on the experimental realization of ultracold $^{174}{\rm Yb}$-$^{7}{\rm Li}$ (Boson-Boson) and $^{173}{\rm Yb}$-$^{7}{\rm Li}$ (Fermion-Boson) mixtures. They are loaded into three dimensional (3D) or one dimensional (1D) optical lattices that are species-selectively deep for the heavy Ytterbium (Yb) and shallow for the light bosonic Lithium (Li) component, realizing novel mixed dimensional systems. In the 1D optical lattice the band structure of $^{173}{\rm Yb}$ is reconstructed in the presence of $^{7}{\rm Li}$. Spectroscopic measurements of the $^{174}{\rm Yb}$-$^{7}{\rm Li}$ mixtu…
The simplest model for itinerant ferromagnetism, the Stoner model, has so far eluded experimental observation in repulsive ultracold fermions due to rapid three-body recombination at large scattering lengths. Here we show that a ferromagnetic phase can be stabilised by imposing a moderate optical lattice. The reduced kinetic energy drop upon formation of a polarized phase in an optical lattice extends the ferromagnetic phase to smaller scattering lengths where three-body recombination is small enough to permit experimental detection of the phase. We also show, using time dependent density func…
Strongly interacting fermionic systems host a variety of interesting quantum many-body states with exotic excitations. For instance, the interplay of strong interactions and the Pauli exclusion principle can lead to Stoner ferromagnetism, but the fate of this state remains unclear when kinetic terms are added. While in many lattice models the fermions' dispersion results in delocalization and destabilization of the ferromagnet, flat bands can restore strong interaction effects and ferromagnetic correlations. To reveal this interplay, here we propose to study the Hofstadter-Fermi-Hubbard model …
We analyze when a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas becomes thermodynamically unstable against phase separation. We focus on the strongly polarised limit where the free energy of the homogeneous mixture can be calculated accurately in terms of well-defined quasiparticles, the repulsive polarons. Phase diagrams as a function of polarisation, temperature, mass imbalance, and repulsive polaron energy, as well as scattering length and range parameter are provided. We show that the lifetime of the repulsive polaron increases significantly with the interaction range and the mass of the…
Properties of the ground state and the spectrum of elementary excitations are investigated for the low density ultracold spinor 3D Bose gas of particles with arbitrary nonzero spin. Gross-Pitaevskii equations are derived. Within the framework of the considering interaction Hamiltonian it is shown that the ground state spin structure and spin part of the chemical potential is determined by the renormalized interaction, being defined by the contribution of the virtual large momenta. The ferromagnetic structure of the ground state, and the equation of the phase, density, and spin dynamics are obt…
Using continuous-space quantum Monte Carlo methods we investigate the zero-temperature ferromagnetic behavior of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas under the influence of periodic potentials that describe the effect of a simple-cubic optical lattice. Simulations are performed with balanced and with imbalanced components, including the case of a single impurity immersed in a polarized Fermi sea (repulsive polaron). For an intermediate density below half filling, we locate the transitions between the paramagnetic, and the partially and the fully ferromagnetic phases. As the intensity of the opt…
We present exact analytic results for the energy of a SU(N) repulsive Fermi gas as a function of the spin-channel occupation at second order in the gas parameter. This is an extension of an old result that now incorporates the degree of polarization of the system. Therefore, the magnetic properties of the gas can be obtained, free from numerical uncertainties. For spin 1/2 we find that second-order corrections change the itinerant ferromagnetic transition from continuous to first-order. Instead, for spin larger than 1/2 the phase transition is always of first-order type. The transition critica…
Recent advances in rapidly quenched ultracold atomic Fermi gases near a Feshbach resonance have brought about a number of interesting problems, in the context of observing the long-sought Stoner ferromagnetic phase transition. The possibility of experimentally obtaining a "quasirepulsive" regime in the upper branch of the energy spectrum due to the rapid quench is currently being debated, and the Stoner transition has mainly been investigated theoretically by using perturbation theory or at high polarization, due to the limited theoretical approaches in the strongly repulsive regime. In this w…
Mott insulators are paradigms of strongly correlated physics, giving rise to phases of matter with novel and hard-to-explain properties. Extending the typical SU(2) symmetry of Mott insulators to SU($N$) is predicted to give exotic quantum magnetism at low temperatures, but understanding the effect of strong quantum fluctuations for large $N$ remains an open challenge. In this work, we experimentally observe nearest-neighbor spin correlations in the SU(6) Hubbard model realized by ytterbium atoms in optical lattices. We study one-dimensional, two-dimensional square, and three-dimensional cubic…
It has long been predicted that a two-component non-localized Fermi gas will exhibit spontaneous polarization for sufficiently strong repulsive interactions, a phenomenon which is called itinerant ferromagnetism. Recent experiments with ultracold atomic gases have reached the interaction strength for which theoretical models have predicted the occurrence of the normal-to-itinerant-ferromagnetic phase transition, but so far this transition has not been observed. The instability of the repulsive branch of the Feshbach resonance prevents the formation of the itinerant ferromagnetic state, but it …
We report on the direct observation of spin-exchanging interactions in a two-orbital SU(N)-symmetric quantum gas of ytterbium in an optical lattice. The two orbital states are represented by two different (meta-)stable electronic configurations of fermionic Yb-173. A strong spin-exchange between particles in the two separate orbitals is mediated by the contact interaction between atoms, which we characterize by clock shift spectroscopy in a 3D optical lattice. We find the system to be SU(N)-symmetric within our measurement precision and characterize all relevant scattering channels for atom pa…
The Fermi-Hubbard model (FHM) is a cornerstone of modern condensed matter theory. Developed for interacting electrons in solids, which typically exhibit SU($2$) symmetry, it describes a wide range of phenomena, such as metal to insulator transitions and magnetic order. Its generalized SU($N$)-symmetric form, originally applied to multi-orbital materials such as transition-metal oxides, has recently attracted much interest owing to the availability of ultracold SU($N$)-symmetric atomic gases. Here we report on a detailed experimental investigation of the SU($N$)-symmetric FHM using local probin…
Ferromagnetism is a manifestation of strong repulsive interactions between itinerant fermions in condensed matter. Whether short-ranged repulsion alone is sufficient to stabilize ferromagnetic correlations in the absence of other effects, like peculiar band dispersions or orbital couplings, is however unclear. Here, we investigate ferromagnetism in the minimal framework of an ultracold Fermi gas with short-range repulsive interactions tuned via a Feshbach resonance. While fermion pairing characterises the ground state, our experiments provide signatures suggestive of a metastable Stoner-like f…
The highly controllable ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional (1D) trap provide a new platform for the ultimate simulation of quantum magnetism. In this regard, the Neel-antiferromagnetism and the itinerant ferromagnetism are of central importance and great interest. Here we show that these magnetic orders can be achieved in the strongly interacting spin-1/2 trapped Fermi gases with additional p-wave interactions. In this strong coupling limit, the 1D trapped Fermi gas exhibit an effective Heisenberg spin XXZ chain in the anisotropic p-wave scattering channels. For a particular p-wave attractio…
Recent experiments have revitalized the interest in a Fermi gas of ultracold atoms with strong repulsive interactions. In spite of its seeming simplicity, this system exhibits a complex behavior, resulting from the competing action of two distinct instabilities: ferromagnetism, which promotes spin anticorrelations and domain formation; and pairing, that renders the repulsive fermionic atoms unstable towards forming weakly bound bosonic molecules. The breakdown of the homogeneous repulsive Fermi liquid arising from such concurrent mechanisms has been recently observed in real time through pump-…
The nature of strongly interacting Fermi gases and magnetism is one of the most important and studied topics in condensed-matter physics. Still, there are many open questions. A central issue is under what circumstances strong short-range repulsive interactions are enough to drive magnetic correlations. Recent progress in the field of cold atomic gases allows to address this question in very clean systems where both particle numbers, interactions and dimensionality can be tuned. Here we study fermionic few-body systems in a one dimensional harmonic trap using a new rapidly converging effective…
