We calculate density-density correlations of an expanding gas of strongly attractive ultra-cold spin-1/2 fermions in an optical lattice. The phase diagram of the tightly bound fermion pairs exhibits a Bose-Einstein condensed state and a Mott insulating state with a single molecule per lattice site. We study the effects of quantum fluctuations on the correlations in both phases and show that they are especially important in the Bose-Einstein condensate state, leading to the appearance of singular peaks. In the Mott insulating state the correlations are characterized by sharp dips. This can be utilized in experiments to distinguish between these two phases.
In the strong interaction limit, attractive fermions with $N$-component hyperfine states in a one-dimensional waveguide form unbreakable bound cluster states. We demonstrate that the ground state of strongly attractive SU($N$) Fermi gases can be effectively described by a super Tonks-Girardeau gas-like state composed of bosonic cluster states with strongly attractive cluster-cluster interaction for even $N$, and a Fermi duality of a super Tonks-Girardeau gas-like state composed of fermionic cluster states with weakly interacting cluster-cluster p-wave interaction for odd $N$.
We demonstrate that a kind of highly excited state of strongly attractive Hubbard model, named of Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state, can be realized in the spin-1/2 Fermi optical lattice system by a sudden switch of interaction from the strongly repulsive regime to the strongly attractive regime. In contrast to the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model, such a state is the lowest scattering state with no pairing between attractive fermions. With the aid of Bethe-ansatz method, we calculate energies of both the Fermi Tonks-Girardeau gas and the Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state of spin-1…
We analyze the dynamics of one-dimensional quantum gases with strongly attractive contact interactions. We specify a class of initial states for which attractive forces effectively act as strongly repulsive ones during the time evolution. Our findings extend the theoretical results on the super-Tonks-Girardeau gas to a highly nonequilibrium dynamics. The novel mechanism is illustrated on the prototypical problem of the domain stability in a two-component Fermi gas. We also discuss nonlocal interactions and analyze universality of the presented results. Moreover, we use our conclusions to argue…
We perform a detailed experimental study of the band excitations and tunneling properties of ultracold fermions in optical lattices. Employing a novel multi-band spectroscopy for fermionic atoms we can measure the full band structure and tunneling energy with high accuracy. In an attractive Bose-Fermi mixture we observe a significant reduction of the fermionic tunneling energy, which depends on the relative atom numbers. We attribute this to an interaction-induced increase of the lattice depth due to self-trapping of the atoms.
We study attractive fermions in an optical lattice superimposed by a trapping potential, such that fermions may form bosonic molecules. We map the model onto nonlinear field equations depending on the Nambu-Gor'kov propagator. The resulting field equations where solved numerically by a relaxation technique that allowed us to calculate the inhomogeneous densities of fermions and condensed molecules at zero temperature. When the interactions between fermions are strong there is a competition between unbound fermions and bound molecules leading to an unexpected reduction of the non-homogeneous de…
We study the attractive and repulsive two-component Fermi gas with spin imbalance in two dimensions. Using a generalized $T$-matrix approximation, we examine the thermodynamic properties of both attractive and repulsive contact interacting Fermi gases. The interaction strength, which is characterized by the bound state energy $E_b=\hbar^2/m a_{2d}^2$ in vacuum, can be adjusted through a Feshbach resonance. We calculate the interaction energy, compressibility and spin susceptibility of the two branches of the Fermi gas. For the repulsive branch, we also find a critical strength of interaction $…
We discuss how approximate theories for Bose-Fermi mixtures recover in the molecular limit the expected expression for Fermi-Fermi mixtures of molecules and unpaired fermions. In particular, we compare the energy of the system resulting from a T-matrix diagrammatic approach with that obtained with Variational and Fixed-Node Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo methods.
We realize and study an attractively interacting two-dimensional Fermi liquid. Using momentum resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we measure the self-energy, determine the contact parameter of the short-range interaction potential, and find their dependence on the interaction strength. We successfully compare the measurements to a theoretical analysis, properly taking into account the finite temperature, harmonic trap, and the averaging over several two-dimensional gases with different peak densities.
We calculate the single-particle spectral functions and quasi-particle dispersions for a Bose-Fermi mixture when the boson-fermion attraction is sufficiently strong to suppress completely the condensation of bosons at zero temperature. Within a T-matrix diagrammatic approach, we vary the boson-fermion attraction from the critical value where the boson condensate first disappears to the strongly attractive (molecular) regime and study the effect of both mass- and density-imbalance on the spectral weights and dispersions. An interesting spectrum of particle-hole excitations mixing two different …
We obtain an analytical equation of state for one-dimensional strongly attractive Fermi gas for all parameter regime in current experiments. From the equation of state we derive universal scaling functions that control whole thermodynamical properties in quantum critical regimes and illustrate physical origin of quantum criticality. It turns out that the critical properties of the system are described by these of free fermions and those of mixtures of fermions with mass $m$ and $2m$. We also show how these critical properties of bulk systems can be revealed from the density profile of trapped …
We investigate thermodynamics and quantum criticality of strongly attractive Fermi gases confined in a one-dimensional (1D) harmonic trap. Finite temperature density profiles, entropy, compressibility and susceptibility of the trapped gas are studied using analytic results for the thermodynamics within the local density approximation. We demonstrate that current experiments are capable of measuring universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid physics and quantum criticality of 1D strongly interacting Fermi gases. The results provide insights on recent measurements of key features of the phase diagram o…
Thermodynamic properties of matter are conveniently expressed as functional relations between variables known as equations of state. Here we experimentally determine the compressibility, density and pressure equations of state for an attractive 2D Fermi gas in the normal phase as a function of temperature and interaction strength. In 2D, interacting gases exhibit qualitatively different features to those found in 3D. This is evident in the normalized density equation of state, which peaks at intermediate densities corresponding to the crossover from classical to quantum behaviour.
Three fermions with strongly repulsive interactions in a spherical harmonic trap, constitute the simplest nontrivial system that can exhibit the onset of itinerant ferromagnetism. Here, we present exact solutions for three trapped, attractively interacting fermions near a Feshbach resonance. We analyze energy levels on the upper branch of the resonance where the atomic interaction is effectively repulsive. When the s-wave scattering length a is sufficiently positive, three fully polarized fermions are energetically stable against a single spin-flip, indicating the possibility of itinerant ferr…
We examine quantum phases emerged by double degeneracy of $p$-orbital bands in attractive atomic Fermi gases loaded on a 1D optical lattice. Our numerical simulations by the density-matrix renormalization group predict the emergence of a state with a charge excitation gap, the Haldane insulator phase. A mapping onto an effective spin-$1$ model reveals its physical origin. Moreover, we show that population imbalance leads to richer diversity of the quantum phases, including a phase-separated polarized state. Finally, we study the effects of harmonic trap potential in this 1D chain.
Using solutions of the discrete Bethe ansatz equations, we study in detail the quantum impurity problem of a spin-down fermion immersed into a fully ploarized spin-up Fermi sea with weak attraction. We prove that this impurity fermion in the one-dimensional (1D) fermionic medium behaves like a polaron for weak attraction. However, as the attraction grows, the spin-down fermion binds with one spin-up fermion from the fully-polarized medium to form a tightly bond molecule. Thus it is seen that the system undergos a cross-over from a mean field polaron-like nature into a mixture of excess fermion…
In this article we investigate the properties of an impurity immersed in a superfluid of strongly correlated spin 1/2 fermions. For resonant interactions, we first relate the stability diagram of dimer and trimer states to the three-body problem for an impurity interacting with a pair of fermions. Then we calculate the beyond-mean-field corrections to the energy of a weakly interacting impurity. We show that these corrections are divergent and have to be regularized by properly accounting for three-body physics in the problem.
We investigate a spinless Fermi gas trapped in a honeycomb optical lattice with attractive nearest-neighbor interactions. At zero temperature, mean-field theory predicts three quantum phase transitions, two being topological. At low interactions, the system is semi-metallic. Increasing the interaction further, the semi-metal destabilizes into a fully gapped superfluid. At larger interactions, a topological transition occurs and this superfluid phase becomes gapless, with Dirac-like dispersion relations. Finally, increasing again the interaction, a second topological transition occurs and the g…
We have studied quasi one-dimensional few-particle systems consisting of one to six ultracold fermionic atoms in two different spin states with attractive interactions. We probe the system by deforming the trapping potential and by observing the tunneling of particles out of the trap. For even particle numbers we observe a tunneling behavior which deviates from uncorrelated single-particle tunneling indicating the existence of pair correlations in the system. From the tunneling timescales we infer the differences in interaction energies of systems with different number of particles which show …
We theoretically investigate how quasi-particle properties of an attractive Fermi polaron are affected by nonzero temperature and finite impurity concentration. By applying both non-self-consistent and self-consistent many-body $T$-matrix theories, we calculate the polaron energy (including decay rate), effective mass, and residue, as functions of temperature and impurity concentration. The temperature and concentration dependences are weak on the BCS side with a negative impurity-medium scattering length. Toward the strong attraction regime across the unitary limit, we find sizable dependence…
One-dimensional spinless Fermi gas with attractive dipole-dipole interaction is investigated. Results obtained show when the interaction is weak, the excitation spectrum is linear and the superconducting correlation function decays as power law, indicating the validity of the Tomonaga-Luttinger (TL) liquid picture. However, when the interaction reaches a critical value, the excitation spectrum is nonlinear and the superconducting correlation function keeps finite for infinity separation, indicating real long-range order established and the breakdown of the TL liquid picture. We prove that the …
In this letter we present a unified derivation of the pressure equation of states, thermodynamics and scaling functions for the one-dimensional (1D) strongly attractive Fermi gases with $SU(w)$ symmetry. These physical quantities provide a rigorous understanding on a universality class of quantum criticality characterised by the critical exponents $z=2$ and correlation length exponent $ν=1/2$. Such a universality class of quantum criticality can occur when the Fermi sea of one branch of charge bound states starts to fill or become gapped at zero temperature. The quantum critical cone can be de…
We investigate the long distance asymptotics of various correlation functions for the one-dimensional spin-1/2 Fermi gas with attractive interactions using the dressed charge formalism. In the spin polarized phase, these correlation functions exhibit spatial oscillations with a power-law decay whereby their critical exponents are found through conformal field theory. We show that spatial oscillations of the leading terms in the pair correlation function and the spin correlation function solely depend on $Δk_F$ and $2Δk_F$, respectively. Here $Δk_F=π(n_{\uparrow}-n_{\downarrow})$ denotes the mi…
We present a rigorous study of momentum distribution and p-wave contacts of one dimensional (1D) spinless Fermi gases with an attractive p-wave interaction. Using the Bethe wave function, we analytically calculate the large-momentum tail of momentum distribution of the model. We show that the leading ($\sim 1/p^{2}$) and sub-leading terms ($\sim 1/p^{4}$) of the large-momentum tail are determined by two contacts $C_2$ and $C_4$, which we show, by explicit calculation, are related to the short-distance behaviour of the two-body correlation function and its derivatives. We show as one increases …
The primary work presented in this paper focuses on the calculation of density-density dynamical correlations in an attractive two dimensional Fermi gas in several physically interesting regimes, including the strongly correlated BEC-BCS crossover regime. We use state-of-the-art dynamical BCS theory and we address the possibility to renormalize the interaction strength, using unbiased Quantum Monte Carlo results as an asset to validate the predictions. We propose that a suitable interplay between dynamical BCS theory, which is computationally very cheap and yields results directly in real time…
Ground-state properties of a few attractively interacting ultra-cold atoms of different mass confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap are studied in terms of the correlation noise. Depending on the mass ratio between the components' atoms, the inter-particle correlations change their properties significantly from a strong pair-like correlation to an almost uncorrelated phase. This change is accompanied by the undergoing change in the structure of the many-body ground state. A crucial role of the quantum statistics is emphasized by comparing properties of the Fermi-Fermi mixture with a corre…
The dynamics of a single impurity in an environment is a fundamental problem in many-body physics. In the solid state, a well-known case is an impurity coupled to a bosonic bath, for example lattice vibrations. Here the impurity together with its accompanying lattice distortion form a new entity, a polaron. This quasiparticle plays an important role in the spectral function of high-Tc superconductors as well as in colossal-magnetoresistance in manganites. For impurities in a fermionic bath, the attention so far has been mostly on heavy or immobile impurities which exhibit Anderson's orthogonal…
We investigate the finite-temperature properties of attractive three-component (colors) fermionic atoms in optical lattices using a self-energy functional approach. As the strength of the attractive interaction increases in the low temperature region, a second-order transition occurs from a Fermi liquid to a color superfluid (CSF). In the strong attractive region, a first-order transition occurs from a CSF to a trionic state. In the high temperature region, a crossover between a Fermi liquid and a trionic state is observed with increasing the strength of the attractive interaction. The crossov…
Quench dynamics and quantum flutter properties of one-dimensional attractive single-spin flipped Fermi gases
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Shanxi University（山西大学理论物理研究所）；State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics Technologies and Devices, Shanxi University（山西大学量子光学与光量子器件国家重点实验室）；Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University（山西大学极端光学协同创新中心）
We study a strongly attractive system of a few spin-1/2 fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, interacting via two-body contact potential. Performing exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian we analyze the ground state and the thermal state of the system in terms of one-- and two--particle reduced density matrices. We show how for strong attraction the correlated pairs emerge in the system. We find that the fraction of correlated pairs depends on temperature and we show that this dependence has universal properties analogous to the gap function known from the theory of supercond…
We investigate the finite-temperature properties of attractive three-component (colors) fermionic atoms in optical lattices using a self-energy functional approach. As the strength of the attractive interaction increases in the low-temperature region, we observe a second-order transition from a Fermi liquid to a color superfluid (CSF), where atoms from two of the three colors form Cooper pairs. In the strong attractive region, we observe a first-order transition from a CSF to a trionic state, where three atoms with different colors form singlet bound states. A crossover between a Fermi liquid …
We study the properties of an impurity of mass $M$ moving through a spatially homogeneous three-dimensional fully polarized Fermi gas of particles of mass $m$. In the weakly attractive limit, where the effective coupling constant $g\to0^-$ and perturbation theory can be used, both for a broad and a narrow Feshbach resonance, we obtain an explicit analytical expression for the complex energy $ΔE(\KK)$ of the moving impurity up to order two included in $g$. This also gives access to its longitudinal and transverse effective masses $m_\parallel^*(\KK)$, $m_\perp^*(\KK)$, as functions of the impur…
A novel way to produce quantum Hall ribbons in a cold atomic system is to use M hyperfine states of atoms in a 1D optical lattice to mimic an additional "synthetic dimension". A notable aspect here is that the SU(M) symmetric interaction between atoms manifests as "infinite ranged" along the synthetic dimension. We study the many body physics of fermions with attractive interactions in this system. We use a combination of analytical field theoretic and numerical density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) methods to reveal the rich ground state phase diagram of the system, including novel phas…
The Fredholm equations for one-dimensional two-component Fermions with repulsive and with attractive delta-function interactions are solved by an asymptotic expansion for A) strong repulsion, B) weak repulsion, C) weak attraction and D) strong attraction. Consequently, we obtain the first few terms of the expansion of ground state energy for the Fermi gas with polarization for these regimes. We also prove that the two sets of the Fredhom equations for weakly repulsive and attractive interactions are identical as long as the integration boundaries match each other between the two sides. Thus th…
A significant feature of the one-dimensional super Tonks-Girardeau gas is its metastable gas-like state with a stronger Fermi-like pressure than for free fermions which prevents a collapse of atoms. This naturally suggests a way to search for such strongly correlated behaviour in systems of interacting fermions in one dimension. We thus show that the strongly attractive Fermi gas without polarization can be effectively described by a super Tonks-Girardeau gas composed of bosonic Fermi pairs with attractive pair-pair interaction. A natural description of such super Tonks-Girardeau gases is prov…
Extensive research has been lavished on effects of spin-orbit couplings (SOC) in attractively interacting Fermi systems in both neutral cold atom systems and condensed matter systems. Recently, it was suggested that a SOC drives a new class of BCS to BEC crossover which is different than the conventional one without a SOC. Here, we explore what are the most relevant physical quantities to describe such a new BCS to BEC crossover and their experimental detections. We extend the concepts of the pairing length and "Cooper-pair size" in the absence of SOC to Fermi systems with SOC. We investigate …
We consider two-dimensional imperfect attractive Fermi and repulsive Bose gases consisting of spinless point particles whose total interparticle interaction energy is represented by $a N^2/2 V$ with $a=-a_{F}\leq 0$ for fermions, and $a=a_{B}\geq 0$ for bosons. We show that in spite of the attraction the thermodynamics of $d=2$ imperfect Fermi gas remains well defined for $0 \leq a_{F}\leq a_{0}=h^2/2πm$, and is exactly the same as the one of the repulsive imperfect Bose gas with $a_{B}=a_{0}-a_{F}$. In particular, for $a_{F}=a_{0}$ one observes the thermodynamic equivalence of the attractive …
We present a detailed study of the population imbalanced three-component Hubbard chain with attractive interactions. Such a system can be realized experimentally with three different hyperfine states of ultra cold $^6$Li atoms in an optical lattice. We find that there are different phases that compete with each other in this system: A molecular superfluid phase in which the three fermion species pair up to form molecules (trions), a usual pairing phase involving two species with exactly opposite momenta, and a more exotic generalized Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase consisting of …
Based on the two-dimensional (2D) attractive Fermi-Hubbard model with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the SOC strength and Zeeman field dependences of the phase diagram are investigated by calculating the pairing gap self-consistently. The results reveal that the phase transition from the BCS superfluid to the topological superfluid happens under proper Zeeman field strength and SOC strength. In particular, in contrast to the BCS superfluid decreasing monotonically as the SOC strength increasing, the topological superfluid region shows a dome with the SOC strength increasing. An optimal regi…
Recent experimental advances in ultra-cold Fermi gases allow for exploring response functions under different dynamical conditions. In particular, the issue of obtaining a "quasi-repulsive" regime starting from a Fermi gas with an attractive inter-particle interaction while avoiding the formation of the two-body bound state is currently debated. Here, we provide a calculation of the density and spin response for a wide range of temperature and coupling both in the attractive and quasi-repulsive regime, whereby the system is assumed to evolve non-adiabatically toward the "upper branch" of the F…
Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory for one-dimensional attractive Fermi gases
Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院精密测量科学与技术创新院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University（莱斯大学物理与天文系）；Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva（日内瓦大学量子物质物理系）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Department of Fundamental and Theoretical Physics, Research School of Physics, Australian National University（澳大利亚国立大学物理研究学院基础与理论物理系）
We study a two-dimensional two-component Fermi gas with attractive or repulsive short-range interactions at zero temperature. We use Diffusion Monte Carlo with Fixed Node approximation in order to calculate the energy per particle and the opposite-spin pair distribution functions. We show the relevance of beyond mean field effects and verify the consistency of our approach by using Tan's Contact relations.
A single down spin Fermion with an attractive, zero range interaction with a Fermi sea of up-spin Fermions forms a polaronic quasiparticle. The associated quasiparticle weight vanishes beyond a critical strength of the attractive interaction, where a many-body bound state is formed. From a variational wavefunction in the molecular limit, we determine the critical value for the polaron to molecule transition. The value agrees well with the diagrammatic Monte Carlo results of Prokof'ev and Svistunov and is consistent with recent rf-spectroscopy measurements of the quasiparticle weight by Schirot…
Understanding novel pairings in attractive degenerate Fermi gases is crucial for exploring rich superfluid physics. In this report, we reveal unconventional pairings induced by spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in a one-dimensional optical lattice, using a state-of-the-art density-matrix renormalization group method. When both bands are partially occupied, we find a strong competition between the interband Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) and intraband Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) pairings. In particular, for the weak and moderate SOC strengths, these two pairings can coexist, giving rise to…
We theoretically investigate attractive Fermi polarons in three dimensions at finite temperature and impurity concentration through the many-body T-matrix theory and high-temperature virial expansion. By using the analytically continued impurity Green's function, we calculate the direct rf spectroscopy of attractive polarons in the unitary regime. Taking the peak value of the rf spectroscopy as the polaron energy and the full width half maximum as the polaron lifetime, we determine the temperature range of validity for the quasi-particle description of Fermi polarons in the unitary limit.
We determine the relative stability of different ground-state phases of spin-imbalanced popula- tions of attractive fermions in square lattices. The phases are systematically characterized by the symmetry of the order parameter and the real- and momentum-space structures using Hartree- Fock-Bogoliubov theory. We find several type of unidirectional Larkin-Ovchinikov-type phases. We discuss the effect of commensuration between the ordering wave vector and the density imbalance, and describe the mechanism of Fermi surface reconstruction and pairing for various orders. A robust supersolid phase is…
We study the attractive Fermi mixture of a ${}^{6}\mathrm{Li}$-${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ gas in one dimension using the continuous matrix product states variational ansatz and obtain the $T=0$ phase diagram. We predict an axial density profile that contains four distinct phases trapped induced along one-dimensional (1D) tubes, which is more intricate than those observed in 1D mass-balanced systems or in higher-dimensional gas clouds. The parameter regimes explored are realistic in view of possible future experiments. This an application of continuous matrix product states to a nonintegrable fermioni…
We probe the superconducting gap in the zero temperature ground state of an attractively interacting spin-imbalanced two-dimensional Fermi gas with Diffusion Monte Carlo. A condensate fraction at nonzero pair momentum evidences a spatially non-uniform superconducting order parameter. Comparison with exact diagonalisation studies confirms that the nonzero condensate fraction across a range of nonzero fermion pair momenta is consistent with non-exclusive pairing between majority and minority fermions, an extension beyond FFLO theory.
The mechanism of fermionic pairing is the key to understanding various phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity and the pseudogap phase in cuprate materials. We study the pair correlations in the attractive Hubbard model using ultracold fermions in a two-dimensional optical lattice. By combining the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the compressibility equation of state, we extract the interacting pair correlation functions and deduce a characteristic length scale of pairs as a function of interaction and density filling. At sufficiently low filling and weak on-site interaction, …
We theoretically study the relaxation of high energy single particle excitations into molecules in a system of attractive fermions in an optical lattice, both in the superfluid and the normal phase. In a system characterized by an interaction scale $U$ and a tunneling rate $t$, we show that the relaxation rate scales as $\sim Ct\exp(-αU^2/t^2)$ in the large $U/t$ limit. We obtain explicit expressions for the exponent $α$, both in the low temperature superfluid phase and the high temperature phase with pairing but no coherence between the molecules. We find that the relaxation rate decreases bo…
We show theoretically that the sudden application of an appropriate ac field to correlated lattice fermions flips the band structure and effectively switches the interaction from repulsive to attractive. The nonadiabatically driven system is characterized by a negative temperature with a population inversion. We numerically demonstrate the converted interaction in an ac-driven Hubbard model with the nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory solved by the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method. Based on this, we propose an efficient ramp-up protocol for ac fields that can suppress heating,…
The ground-state properties of the two-flavored mixture of a few attractive fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap is studied. It is shown that for slightly imbalanced system the pairing between fermions of opposite spins has completely different features that in the balanced case. The fraction of correlated pairs is suppressed by the presence of additional particle and another uncorrelated two-body orbital dominates in the ground-state of the system.
A translation invariant one-dimensional system of spinless fermions with a finite-range attraction experiences a quantum phase transition to a phase-separated state. While being a conventional Luttinger liquid for a small interaction strength, spinless fermions form a droplet with the size smaller than the available one-dimensional volume when the interaction strength exceeds some critical value. A particularly remarkable signature of the droplet formation is the change in the lower edge of the many-body excitation spectrum. In the homogeneous phase, it has a Luttinger-liquid shape of periodic…
