Few-body physics related to the Efimov effect is discussed using the functional renormalization group method. After a short review of renormalization in its modern formulation we apply this formalism to the description of scattering and bound states in few-body systems of identical bosons and distinguishable fermions with two and three components. The Efimov effect leads to a limit cycle in the renormalization group flow. Recently measured three-body loss rates in an ultracold Fermi gas $^6$Li atoms are explained within this framework. We also discuss briefly the relation to the many-body physics of the BCS-BEC crossover for two-component fermions and the formation of a trion phase for the case of three species.
We study the semisuper-Efimov effect, which is found for four identical bosons with a resonant three-body interaction in 2D, in various systems. Based on solutions of bound-state and renormalization-group equations, we first demonstrate an emergence of the semisuper-Efimov effect in mass-imbalanced bosons in 2D. Compared with the Efimov and the super-Efimov effects, the mass ratio-dependent scaling parameter is unexpectedly found to take on a finite value even for extremely mass-imbalanced situations, where the mass ratio is 0 or $\infty$. By a renormalization-group analysis, we also show that…
The Efimov effect is the only experimentally realized universal phenomenon that exhibits the renormalization-group limit cycle with the three-body parameter parametrizing a family of universality classes. Recent experiments in ultracold atoms have unexpectedly revealed that the three-body parameter itself is universal when measured in units of an effective range. By performing an exact functional renormalization-group analysis with various finite-range interaction potentials, we demonstrate that the onset of the renormalization-group flow into the limit cycle is universal, regardless of short-…
In a three-body system of identical bosons interacting through a large S-wave scattering length $a$, there are several sets of Efimov features related by discrete scale invariance. Effective field theory was recently used to derive universal relations between these Efimov features that include the first-order correction due to a nonzero effective range $r_s$. We reveal a simple pattern in these range corrections that had not been previously identified. The pattern is explained by the renormalization group for the effective field theory, which implies that the Efimov three-body parameter runs l…
We study two species of particles in two dimensions interacting by isotropic short-range potentials with the interspecies potential fine-tuned to a p-wave resonance. Their universal low-energy physics can be extracted by analyzing a properly constructed low-energy effective field theory with the renormalization group method. Consequently, a three-body system consisting of two particles of one species and one of the other is shown to exhibit the super Efimov effect, the emergence of an infinite tower of three-body bound states with orbital angular momentum $l=\pm1$ whose binding energies obey a…
We study a system of spinless fermions in two dimensions with a short-range interaction fine-tuned to a p-wave resonance. We show that three such fermions form an infinite tower of bound states of orbital angular momentum l=\pm1 and their binding energies obey a universal doubly exponential scaling E_3^{(n)}\propto\exp(-2e^{3πn/4+θ}) at large n. This "super Efimov effect" is found by a renormalization group analysis and confirmed by solving the bound state problem. We also provide an indication that there are l=\pm2 four-body resonances associated with every three-body bound state at E_4^{(n)}…
A general mechanism for the loss of conformal invariance is the merger and disappearance of an infrared fixed point and an ultraviolet fixed point of a renormalization group flow. We show explicitly how this mechanism works in the case of identical bosons at unitarity as the spatial dimension $d$ is varied. For $d$ between the critical dimensions $d_{\rm 1}=2.30$ and $d_{\rm 2}=3.76$, there is loss of conformality as evidenced by the Efimov effect in the three-body sector. The beta function for an appropriate three-body coupling is a quadratic polynomial in that coupling. For $d<d_{\rm 1}$ and…
The loss of conformal invariance in Efimov physics is due to the merger and disappearance of an infrared and an ultraviolet fixed point of a three-body renormalization group flow as the spatial dimension $d$ is varied. In the case of identical bosons at unitarity, it is known that there are two critical dimensions $d_{\rm 1}=2.30$ and $d_{\rm 2}=3.76$ at which there is loss of conformality. For $d<d_{\rm 1}$ and $d>d_{\rm 2}$, the beta function of the three-body coupling has real roots which correspond to infrared and ultraviolet fixed points. The fixed points merge and disappear into the comp…
We use an effective-field-theory framework to analyze the Efimov effect in heteronuclear three-body systems consisting of two species of atoms with a large interspecies scattering length. In the leading-order description of this theory, various three-body observables in heteronuclear mixtures can be universally parameterized by one three-body parameter. We present the next-to-leading corrections, which include the effects of the finite interspecies effective range and the finite intraspecies scattering length, to various three-body observables. We show that only one additional three-body param…
Three particles with large scattering length display a universal spectrum of three-body bound states called "Efimov trimers''. We calculate the modification of the Efimov trimers of three identical bosons in a finite cubic box and compute the dependence of their energies on the box size using effective field theory. Previous calculations for positive scattering length that were perturbative in the finite volume energy shift are extended to arbitrarily large shifts and negative scattering lengths. The renormalization of the effective field theory in the finite volume is explicitly verified. Mor…
Efimov physics is renowned for the self-similar spectrum featuring the universal ratio of one eigenenergy to its neighbor. Even more esoteric is the numerically unveiled fact that every Efimov trimer is accompanied by a pair of tetramers. Here we demonstrate that this hierarchy of universal few-body clusters has a topological origin by identifying the numbers of universal 3- and 4-body bound states with the winding numbers of the renormalization-group limit cycle in theory space. The finding suggests a topological phase transition in mass-imbalanced few-body systems which should be tested expe…
Surface growth governed by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation in dimensions higher than two undergoes a roughening transition from smooth to rough phases with increasing the nonlinearity. It is also known that the KPZ equation can be mapped onto quantum mechanics of attractive bosons with a contact interaction, where the roughening transition corresponds to a binding transition of two bosons with increasing the attraction. Such critical bosons in three dimensions actually exhibit the Efimov effect, where a three-boson coupling turns out to be relevant under the renormalization group so as …
Low-energy effective field theory describing a nonrelativistic three-body system is analyzed in the Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) method. No effective auxiliary field (dimeron) that corresponds to two-body propagation is introduced. The Efimov effect is expected in the case of an infinite two-body scattering length, and is believed to be related to the limit cycle behavior in the three-body renormalization group equations (RGEs). If the one-loop property of the RGEs for the nonrelativistic system without the dimeron field, which is essential in deriving RGEs in the two-body sector, pers…
We solve the three-body bound state problem in three dimensions for mass imbalanced systems of two identical bosons and a third particle in the universal limit where the interactions are assumed to be of zero-range. The system displays the Efimov effect and we use the momentum-space wave equation to derive formulas for the scaling factor of the Efimov spectrum for any mass ratio assuming either that two or three of the two-body subsystems have a bound state at zero energy. We consider the single-particle momentum distribution analytically and numerically and analyse the tail of the momentum di…
Resonant P-wave interactions can be described by a minimal zero-range model defined by a truncated effective range expansion, so that the only 2-body interaction parameters are the inverse scattering volume 1/a_P and the P-wave effective range r_P. This minimal model can be formulated as a local quantum field theory with a P-wave interaction between atom fields and a molecular field. In the two-atom sector, the model is renormalizable, but it has unphysical behavior at high energies, because there are negative-probability states with momentum scale r_P. In the sector with three atoms, two of w…
For non-relativistic quantum field theory in the few-body limit with instantaneous interactions it is shown within the functional renormalization group formalism that propagators are not renormalized and that the renormalization group equations of one-particle irreducible vertex functions are governed by a hierarchical structure. This hierarchy allows to solve the equations in the n-body sector without knowledge or assumptions about the m-body sectors where m>n.
Functional renormalization group (FRG) is applied to the three-body scattering problem in the two-component fermionic system with an attractive contact interaction. We establish a new and correct flow equation on the basis of FRG and show that our flow equation is consistent with integral equations obtained from the Dyson-Schwinger equation. In particular, the relation of our flow equation and the Skornyakov and Ter-Martirosyan equation for the atom-dimer scattering is made clear.
We present a strategy for estimating the error of truncated functional flow equations. While the basic functional renormalization group equation is exact, approximated solutions by means of truncations do not only depend on the choice of the retained information, but also on the precise definition of the truncation. Therefore, results depend on specification parameters that can be used to quantify the error of a given truncation. We demonstrate this for the BCS-BEC crossover in ultracold atoms. Within a simple truncation the precise definition of the frequency dependence of the truncated propa…
The method of functional renormalization is applied to the theoretical investigation of ultracold quantum gases. Flow equations are derived for a Bose gas with approximately pointlike interaction, for a Fermi gas with two (hyperfine) spin components in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover and for a Fermi gas with three components. The solution of the flow equations determine the properties of these systems both in the few-body regime and in thermal equilibrium. For the Bose gas this covers the quantum phase diagram, the condensate and superfluid fra…
We study weakly interacting Bose gases using the functional renormalization group with a hydrodynamic effective action. We use a scale-dependent parametrization of the boson fields that interpolates between a Cartesian representation at high momenta and an amplitude-phase one for low momenta. We apply this to Bose gases in two and three dimensions near the superfluid phase transition where they can be described by statistical O(2) models. We are able to give consistent physical descriptions of the infrared regime in both two and three dimensions. In particular, and in contrast to previous stud…
We show an application of the functional-renormalization-group aided density functional theory to the homogeneous electron gas with arbitrary spin polarization, which gives the energy density functional in the local spin density approximation. The correlation energy per particle is calculated at arbitrary Wigner-Seitz radius $ r_{\rm s} $ and spin polarization $ ζ$. In the high-density region, our result shows good agreement with Monte Carlo (MC) data. The agreement with MC data is better in the case of small spin polarization, while the discrepancy increases as the spin polarization increases…
Functional renormalization group equations are analytically continued from imaginary Matsubara frequencies to the real frequency axis. On the example of a scalar field with O(N) symmetry we discuss the analytic structure of the flowing action and show how it is possible to derive and solve flow equations for real-time properties such as propagator residues and particle decay widths. The formalism conserves space-time symmetries such as Lorentz or Galilei invariance and allows for improved, self-consistent approximations in terms of derivative expansions in Minkowski space.
We show an $\textit{ab initio}$ construction of the energy density functional (EDF) for electron systems using the functional renormalization group. The correlation energies of the homogeneous electron gas given in our framework reproduce the exact behavior at high density and agree with the Monte-Carlo data in a wide range of densities. Our analytic technique enables us to get the correlation energies efficiently for various densities, which realizes the determination of EDF in the local density approximation (LDA) without any fitting for physically relevant densities. Applied to the Kohn-Sha…
We review the functional renormalization group (RG) approach to the BCS-BEC crossover for an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms. Formulated in terms of a scale-dependent effective action, the functional RG interpolates continuously between the atomic or molecular microphysics and the macroscopic physics on large length scales. We concentrate on the discussion of the phase diagram as a function of the scattering length and the temperature which is a paradigm example for the non-perturbative power of the functional RG. A systematic derivative expansion provides for both a description of the many-b…
We propose a method of multi-regulator functional renormalization group (MR-FRG) which is a novel formulation of functional renormalization group with multiple infrared regulators. It is applied to a two-component fermionic system with an attractive contact interaction to study crossover phenomena between the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) phase and the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) phase. To control both the fermionic one-particle excitations and the bosonic collective excitations,IR regulators are introduced, one for the fermionic two-point function and another for the four-fermion verte…
We investigate the massive Schwinger model in $d=1+1$ dimensions using bosonization and the nonperturbative functional renormalization group. In agreement with previous studies we find that the phase transition, driven by a change of the ratio $m/e$ between the mass and the charge of the fermions, belongs to the two-dimensional Ising universality class. The temperature and vacuum angle dependence of various physical quantities (chiral density, electric field, entropy density) are also determined and agree with results obtained from density matrix renormalization group studies. Screening of fra…
We study weakly-repulsive Bose-Bose mixtures in two and three dimensions at zero temperature using the functional renormalization group (FRG). We examine the RG flows and the role of density and spin fluctuations. We study the condition for phase separation and find that this occurs at the mean-field point within the range of parameters explored. Finally, we examine the energy per particle and condensation depletion. We obtain that our FRG calculations compare favorably with known results from perturbative approaches for macroscopic properties.
We develop a functional renormalization group approach to obtain the time evolution of the momentum distribution function of interacting bosons out of equilibrium. Using an external out-scattering rate as flow parameter, we derive formally exact renormalization group flow equations for the non-equilibrium self-energies in the Keldysh basis. A simple perturbative truncation of these flow equations leads to an approximate solution of the quantum Boltzmann equation which does not suffer from secular terms and gives accurate results even for long times. We demonstrate this explicitly within a simp…
