We consider the problem of obtaining the scattering length for a fermion colliding with a dimer, formed from a fermion identical to the incident one and another different fermion. This is done in the universal regime where the range of interactions is short enough so that the scattering length $a$ for non identical fermions is the only relevant quantity. This is the generalization to fermions with different masses of the problem solved long ago by Skorniakov and Ter-Martirosian for particles with equal masses. We solve this problem analytically in the two limiting cases where the mass of the solitary fermion is very large or very small compared to the mass of the two other identical fermions. This is done both for the value of the scattering length and for the function entering the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian integral equation, for which simple explicit expressions are obtained.
We study the dimer-dimer scattering length $a_4$ for a two-component Fermi mixture in which the different fermions have different masses $m\us$ and $m\ds$. This is made in the framework of the exact field theoretical method. In the large mass ratio domain the equations are simplified enough to lead to an analytical solution. In particular we link $a_4$ to the fermion-dimer scattering length $a_3$ for the same fermions, and obtain the very simple relation $a_4=a_3/2$. The result $a_4 \simeq a_3/2$ is actually valid whatever the mass ratio with quite good precision. As a result we find an analyt…
We develop a diagrammatic approach for solving few-body problems in heteronuclear fermionic mixtures near a narrow interspecies Feshbach resonance. We calculate s-, p-, and d-wave phaseshifts for the scattering of an atom by a weakly-bound dimer. The fermionic statistics of atoms and the composite nature of the dimer lead to a strong angular momentum dependence of the atom-dimer interaction, which manifests itself in a peculiar interference of the scattered s- and p-waves. This effect strengthens with the mass ratio and is remarkably pronounced in 40K-(40K-6Li) atom-dimer collisions. We calcul…
We predict the existence of high frequency modes in the interference pattern of two condensates made of fermionic-atom dimers. These modes, which result from fermion exchanges between condensates, constitute a striking signature of the dimer composite nature. From the 2-coboson spatial correlation function, that we derive analytically, and the Shiva diagrams that visualize many-body effects specific to composite bosons, we identify the physical origin of these high frequency modes and determine the conditions to see them experimentally by using bound fermionic-atom pairs trapped on optical lat…
Collisions of two fermionic dimers near the unitary limit are studied using exact four-particle equations for transition operators in momentum space. Universal properties of dimer-dimer phase shifts and effective range expansion (ERE) parameters are determined. The inclusion of the fourth-order momentum term in the ERE significantly extends its validity to higher collision energies. The dimer-dimer scattering length and effective range are determined in the unitary limit as well as their corrections arising due to the finite range of the two-fermion interaction. These results are of considerab…
We show that, near a Feshbach resonance, a strong p-wave resonance is present at low energy in atom-dimer scattering for $^6$Li-$^{40}$K fermionic mixtures. This resonance is due to a virtual bound state, in the atom-dimer system, which is present at this low energy. When the mass ratio between the two fermionic elements is increased, this virtual bound state goes to a known real bound state which appears when the mass ratio reaches 8.17. This resonance should affect a number of physical properties. These include the equation of state of unbalanced mixtures at very low temperature but also the…
We study the ratio between the fermion-fermion scattering length and the dimer-dimer scattering length for systems of nonrelativistic fermions, using the same functional renormalisation technique as previously applied to fermionic matter. We find a strong dependence on the cutoff function used in the renormalisation flow for a two-body truncation of the action. Adding a simple three-body term substantially reduces this dependence.
We study the convergence of a functional renormalisation group technique by looking at the ratio between the fermion-fermion scattering length and the dimer-dimer scattering length for a system of nonrelativistic fermions. We find that in a systematic expansion in powers of the fields there is a rapid convergence of the result that agrees with know exact results.
We consider systems of two-component fermions with unequal masses and interacting via a short-range attractive potential. We discuss the case where the two-component fermions form a shallow dimer with large scattering length. The three-fermion and four-fermion systems with such properties are universal and charazteried by the two-fermion scattering length $a_{\text{ff}}$ and the ratio of the mass of spin-$\uparrow$ fermion to the mass of spin-$\downarrow$ fermion, $m_{\uparrow}/m_{\downarrow}$. In this study using lattice effective field theory we analyze fermion-dimer and dimer-dimer systems,…
Motivated by a recent experiment by ENS group on the mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids (arxiv:1404.2548), we investigate the effective scattering between a bosonic atom and a molecule(dimer) of fermion atoms. It is found that the mean-field prediction of the atom-dimer scattering length ($a_{ad}$), as simply given by the boson-fermion scattering length ($a_{bf}$), generically fails. Instead, $a_{ad}$ crucially depends on the ratio between $a_{bf}$ and $a_{ff}$ (the fermion-fermion scattering length), and in addition log-periodically depends on the three-body parameter. We identify the univ…
Using the diagrammatic approach, here we study how spin-orbit coupling (SOC) affects the fermion-dimer and dimer-dimer scattering lengths in the Born approximation, and benchmark their accuracy with the higher-order approximations. We consider both isotropic and Rashba couplings in three dimensions, and show that the Born approximation gives accurate results in the $1/(m αa_s) \ll -1$ limit, where $m$ is the mass of the fermions, $α$ is the strength of the SOC, and $a_s$ is the $s$-wave scattering length between fermions. This is because the higher-loop contributions form a perturbative series…
We use the composite boson (coboson) many-body formalism to tackle scattering lengths for cold fermionic atoms. We show that bound dimers can be taken as elementary entities provided that fermion exchanges between them are treated exactly, as can be done through the coboson formalism. This alternative tool extended to cold atom physics not only makes transparent many-body processes through Shiva diagrams specific to cobosons, but also simplifies calculations. Indeed, the integral equation we derive for the atom-dimer scattering length and solve by restricting the dimer relative motion to the g…
Mixtures of polarised fermions of two different masses can form weakly-bound clusters, such as dimers and trimers, that are universally described by the scattering length between the heavy and light fermions. We use the resonating group method to investigate the low-energy scattering processes involving dimers or trimers. The method reproduces approximately the known particle-dimer and dimer-dimer scattering lengths. We use it to estimate the trimer-trimer scattering length, which is presently unknown, and find it to be positive.
Unlike the Coulomb potential that acts between all semiconductor carriers, the potential commonly used for BCS superconductors and cold atom gases acts between different fermion species only, these species differing by their spin or hyperfine index. The coboson formalism we here develop evidences that such composite bosons interact through fermion exchange only, thus rendering the structure of the Shiva diagrams that visualize their many-body effects far simpler. A separable potential is used to obtain analytical results for the $N$-coboson normalization factor and the $N$-coboson ground-state…
In the systems of spin $\frac12$ fermions with resonant $S$-wave interactions supporting only weakly bound dimers the antisymmetry forbids recombination of three (or more) fermions at zero energy. However, the fermion-fermion-dimer recombination is only partially suppressed. It is studied in the framework of momentum-space integral equations for the four-particle transition operators. In the vicinity of the unitary limit the fermion-fermion-dimer recombination rate, rescaled to build dimensionless quantity, is found to be linear in the effective range parameter, enabling a simple and accurate …
We consider a heteronuclear fermionic mixture on the molecular side of an interspecies Feshbach resonance and discuss atom-dimer scattering properties in uniform space and in the presence of an external confining potential, restricting the system to a quasi-2D geometry. We find that there is a peculiar atom-dimer p-wave resonance which can be tuned by changing the frequency of the confinement. Our results have implications for the ongoing experiments on Lithium-Potassium mixtures, where this mechanism allows for switching the p-wave interaction between a K atom and Li-K dimer from attractive t…
We study near a Feshbach resonance, as a function of the mass ratio, the fermion-dimer scattering amplitude in fermionic mixtures of two fermion species. When masses are equal the physical situation is known to be quite simple. We show that, when the mass ratio is increased, the situation becomes much more complex. For the s-wave contribution we obtain an analytical solution in the asymptotic limit of very large mass ratio. In this regime the s-wave scattering amplitude displays a large number of zeros, essentially linked to the known large value of the fermion-dimer scattering length in this …
We consider two-component fermions with short-range interactions and large scattering length. This system has universal properties that are realized in several different fields of physics. In the limit of large fermion-fermion scattering length $a_\mathrm{ff}$ and zero-range interaction, all properties of the system scale proportionally with $a_\mathrm{ff}$. For the case with shallow bound dimers, we calculate the dimer-dimer scattering phase shifts using lattice effective field theory. We extract the universal dimer-dimer scattering length $a_\mathrm{dd}/a_\mathrm{ff}=0.618(30)$ and effective…
Using infinite projected entangled pair states (iPEPS), exact diagonalization, and flavor-wave theory, we show that the SU(4) Heisenberg model undergoes a spontaneous dimerization on the square lattice, in contrast to its SU(2) and SU(3) counterparts, which develop Neel and three-sublattice stripe-like long-range order. Since the ground state of a dimer is not a singlet for SU(4) but a 6-dimensional irrep, this leaves the door open for further symmetry breaking. We provide evidence that, unlike in SU(4) ladders, where dimers pair up to form singlet plaquettes, here the SU(4) symmetry is additi…
We investigate a mixture of ultracold fermionic $^{40}$K atoms and weakly bound $^{6}$Li$^{40}$K dimers on the repulsive side of a heteronuclear atomic Feshbach resonance. By radio-frequency spectroscopy we demonstrate that the normally repulsive atom-dimer interaction is turned into a strong attraction. The phenomenon can be understood as a three-body effect in which two heavy $^{40}$K fermions exchange the light $^{6}$Li atom, leading to attraction in odd partial-wave channels (mainly p-wave). Our observations show that mass imbalance in a fermionic system can profoundly change the character…
We study the problem of three ultracold fermions in different hyperfine states loaded into a lattice with spatial dimension D=1,2. We consider SU(3)-symmetric attractive interactions and also eventually include a three-body constraint, which mimics the effect of three-body losses in the strong-loss regime. We combine exact diagonalization with the Lanczos algorithm, and evaluate both the eigenvalues and the eigenstates of the problem. In D=1, we find that the ground state is always a three-body bound state (trion) for arbitrarily small interaction, while in D=2, due to the stronger influence o…
We use the diagrammatic $T$-matrix approach to analyze the three-body scattering problem between two identical fermions and a third particle (which could be a different species of fermion or a boson). We calculate the s-wave dimer-atom scattering length for all mass ratios, and our results exactly match the results of Petrov. In particular, we list the exact dimer-atom scattering lengths for all available two-species Fermi-Fermi and Bose-Fermi mixtures. In addition, unlike that of the equal-mass particles case where the three-body scattering $T$-matrix decays monotonically as a function of the…
We present continuum and lattice calculations for elastic scattering between a fermion and a bound dimer in the shallow binding limit. For the continuum calculation we use the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian (STM) integral equation to determine the scattering length and effective range parameter to high precision. For the lattice calculation we use the finite-volume method of Lüscher. We take into account topological finite-volume corrections to the dimer binding energy which depend on the momentum of the dimer. After subtracting these effects, we find from the lattice calculation kappa a_fd = 1.17…
We theoretically study spin-$1/2$ fermions confined to two spatial dimensions and experiencing isotropic short-range attraction in the presence of both spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman spin splitting - a prototypical system for developing topological superfluidity in the many-body sector. Exact solutions for two-particle bound states are found to have a triplet contribution that dominates over the singlet part in an extended region of parameter space where the combined Zeeman- and center-of-mass-motion-induced spin-splitting energy is large. The triplet character of dimers is purest in the regim…
The bulk viscosity of two-component fermions with a zero-range interaction is revisited both in two and three dimensions. We first point out that the "standard" Kubo formula employed in recent studies has flaws to give rise to an unphysical divergent bulk viscosity even in a limit where it is supposed to vanish. The corrected Kubo formula as well as the sum rule is then carefully rederived so as to confirm that the bulk viscosity indeed vanishes in the free, unitarity, and dimer limits. We also discuss that the recently found discrepancy between the Kubo formalism and the kinetic theory for th…
We present lattice Monte Carlo calculations of fermion-dimer scattering in the limit of zero-range interactions using the adiabatic projection method. The adiabatic projection method uses a set of initial cluster states and Euclidean time projection to give a systematically improvable description of the low-lying scattering cluster states in a finite volume. We use Lüscher's finite-volume relations to determine the s-wave, p-wave, and d-wave phase shifts. For comparison, we also compute exact lattice results using Lanczos iteration and continuum results using the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equ…
The BEC regime of a cold fermi gas is characterised by coupled atoms (dimers) which, superficially, look like elementary bosons. We examine how simply-bosonic they really are; firstly, in the Bogoliubov approximation and further, through new actions for the BEC regime in which dimers are represented by coupled Gross-Pitaevskii fields. We find identity at the level of the Bogoliubov approximation in the deep BEC regime, permitting a simple Gross-Pitaevskii description. This fails rapidly as we move towards the BCS regime. However, even in the deep BEC regime there is an intrinsic difference if …
We analytically study the atom-dimer scattering problem in the near-integrable limit when the oscillator length l_0 of the transverse confinement is smaller than the dimer size, ~l_0^2/|a|, where a<0 is the interatomic scattering length. The leading contributions to the atom-diatom reflection and break-up probabilities are proportional to a^6 in the bosonic case and to a^8 for the up-(up-down) scattering in a two-component fermionic mixture. We show that by tuning a and l_0 one can control the "degree of integrability" in a quasi-1D atom-dimer mixture in an extremely wide range leaving thermod…
In this letter we study the interaction energy in a mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids realized in recent cold atom experiment. On the Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) side of a Feshbach resonance between fermionic atoms, this interaction energy can be directly related to the scattering length between a bosonic atom and a dimer composed of fermions. We calculate the atom-dimer scattering length from a three-body analysis with both a zero-range model and a separable model including the van der Waals length scale, and we find significant deviation from the result given by a mean-field approach.…
We study collisional loss of a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) spin-polarized Fermi gas near a $p$-wave Feshbach resonance in ultracold $^6$Li atoms. We measure the location of the $p$-wave resonance in quasi-1D and observe a confinement-induced shift and broadening. We find that the three-body loss coefficient $L_3$ as a function of the quasi-1D confinement has little dependence on confinement strength. We also analyze the atom loss with a two-step cascade three-body loss model in which weakly bound dimers are formed prior to their loss arising from atom-dimer collisions. Our data are consistent w…
We present a theoretical study of the BEC-BCS crossover in the Bose-Einstein-Condensate regime (BEC), in the case of an unequal number of fermions of two species. We take full account of the composite nature of the dimers made of fermions. In the limit of low densities, we calculate the ground state energy of the system, or equivalentely the chemical potentials of each species as well as the one-particle gap and the energy of an "impurity" immersed in a Fermi sea. For the chemical potentials we go up to order (density)^{4/3}.The results found involve the exact atom-dimer a_{AD} and dimer-dimer…
We investigate the rich quantum phase diagram of Wegner's theory of discrete Ising gauge fields interacting with $U(1)$ symmetric single-component fermion matter hopping on a two-dimensional square lattice. In particular limits the model reduces to (i) pure $\mathbb{Z}_2$ even and odd gauge theories, (ii) free fermions in a static background of deconfined $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge fields, (iii) the kinetic Rokhsar-Kivelson quantum dimer model at a generic dimer filling. We develop a local transformation that maps the lattice gauge theory onto a model of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge-invariant spin $1/2$ deg…
We investigate a quantum many-body lattice system of one-dimensional spinless fermions interacting with a dynamical $Z_2$ gauge field. The gauge field mediates long-range attraction between fermions resulting in their confinement into bosonic dimers. At strong coupling we develop an exactly solvable effective theory of such dimers with emergent constraints. Even at generic coupling and fermion density, the model can be rewritten as a local spin chain. Using the Density Matrix Renormalization Group the system is shown to form a Luttinger liquid, indicating the emergence of fractionalized excita…
We derive the scattering length of composite bosons (cobosons) within the framework of the composite boson many-body formalism that uses correlated-pair states as a basis, instead of free fermion states. The integral equation constructed from this physically relevant basis makes transparent the role of fermion exchange in the coboson-coboson effective scattering. Three potentials used for Cooper pairs, fermionic-atom dimers, and semiconductor excitons are considered. While the s-wave scattering length for the BCS-like potential is just equal to its Born value, the other two are substantially s…
Using the framework of effective field theory, we present a detailed study of the Efimov effect in higher partial waves for systems of two identical particles and a third distinguishable particle. Depending on the total angular momentum $L$, the two identical particles must be bosons or fermions. We derive analytical expressions for the elastic and inelastic atom-dimer scattering cross sections as well as the atom-dimer relaxation rate at the dimer breakup threshold. For the experimentally most relevant case of P-waves, we numerically calculate the atom-dimer scattering cross sections and rela…
