Consistent theory of self-bound quantum droplets with bosonic pairing
Hui Hu, Xia-Ji Liu
备注：
Minor changes thanks to the referee's reports; to appear in Physical Review Letters; Together with arXiv:2006.00434 [PRA 102, 043301 (2020)], arXiv:2006.05769 [PRA 102, 043302 (2020)] and arXiv:2007.00888 [to appear in New Journal of Physics], we present a bosonic pairing theory of quantum droplets in binary Bose mixtures
We revisit the Bogoliubov theory of quantum droplets proposed by Petrov {[}Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{115}, 155302 (2015){]} for an ultracold Bose-Bose mixture, where the mean-field collapse is stabilized by the Lee-Huang-Yang quantum fluctuations. We show that a loophole in Petrov's theory, i.e., the ignorance of the softening complex Bogoliubov spectrum, can be naturally removed by the introduction of bosonic pairing. The pairing leads to weaker mean-field attractions, and also stronger Lee-Huang-Yang term in the case of unequal intraspecies interactions. As a result, the equilibrium density for the formation of self-bound droplets significantly decrease in the deep droplet regime, in agreement with a recent observation from diffusion Monte Carlo simulations. Our construction of a consistent Bogoliubov theory paves the way to understand the puzzling low critical number of small quantum droplets observed in the experiment {[}Science \textbf{359}, 301 (2018){]}.
We analytically calculate the leading quantum corrections of the ground-state energy of two- and one-dimensional weakly interacting Rabi-coupled Bose-Bose mixtures in the frame of the Bogoliubov approximation. We show that to repulsive intraspecies and attractive interspecies interactions, the effect of quantum fluctuations favors the formation of self-bound droplets. These liquidlike states are crucially affected by the Rabi coupling, leading thus to the appearance of a quantum instability. We derive meaningful formulas to describe the droplet phase in the one-dimensional case.
We demonstrate the existence of quantum droplets in two-component one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard chains. The droplets exist for any strength of repulsive intra-species interactions provided they are balanced by comparable attractive inter-species interactions. The ground-state phase diagram is presented and the different phases are characterized by examining the density profile and off-diagonal one- and two-body correlation functions. A rich variety of phases is found, including atomic superfluid gases, atomic superfluid droplets, pair superfluid droplets, pair superfluid gases and a Mott-insula…
We report on the formation of heteronuclear quantum droplets in an attractive bosonic mixture of 41K and 87Rb. We observe long-lived self-bound states, both in free space and in an optical waveguide. In the latter case, the dynamics under the effect of a species-dependent force confirms their bound nature. By tuning the interactions from the weakly to the strongly attractive regime, we study the transition from expanding to localized states, in both geometries. We compare the experimental results with beyond mean-field theory and we find a good agreement in the full range of explored interacti…
An ultradilute quantum droplet is a self-bound liquid-like state recently observed in ultracold Bose-Einstein condensates. In all previous theoretical studies, it is described by a phenomenological low-energy effective theory, termed as the extended Gross\textendash Pitaevskii equation. Here, we microscopically derive the Gross\textendash Pitaevskii equation for the condensate and also for a pairing field in an inhomogeneous quantum droplet realized by Bose-Bose mixtures with attractive inter-species interaction. We show that the inclusion of the pairing field is essential, in order to have a …
We explore the properties of weakly bound bosonic states in the strongly interacting regime. Combining a correlated-Gaussian (CG) basis set expansion with a complex scaling method, we extract the energies and structural properties of bosonic cluster states with $N\le6$ for different two-body potentials. The identification of five- and six-body resonances attached to an excited Efimov trimer provides strong support to the premise of Efimov universality in bosonic systems. Our study also reveals a rich structure of bosonic cluster states. Besides the lowest cluster states which behave as bosonic…
Ultradilute quantum droplets are intriguing new state of matter, in which the attractive mean-field force can be balanced by the repulsive force from quantum fluctuations to avoid collapse. Here, we present a microscopic theory of ultradilute quantum droplets in three-, one- and two-dimensional two-component Bose-Bose mixtures, by generalizing the conventional Bogoliubov theory to include the bosonic pairing arising from the interspecies attraction. Our pairing theory is fully equivalent to a variational approach and hence gives an upper bound for the energy of quantum droplets. In three dimen…
We study an impurity immersed in the mixture of Bose ultracold gases in the regime where a quantum droplet exists. The quasi-one-dimensional geometry is considered. We find an effective attractive potential that acts by the quantum droplet onto the impurity. The bound states of the impurity in this potential are investigated. These impurity bound states can provide potential probes for the presence of quantum fluctuations effects on the droplet properties. In the case of strong impurity-BEC coupling, we study the properties of the nonlinear local modes on the impurity induced by the quantum fl…
While quantum fluctuations in binary mixtures of bosonic atoms with short-range interactions can lead to the formation of a self-bound droplet, for equal intra-component interactions but an unequal number of atoms in the two components, there is an excess part that cannot bind to the droplet. Imposing confinement, as here through periodic boundary conditions in a one-dimensional setting, the droplet becomes amalgamated with a residual condensate. The rotational properties of this compound system reveal simultaneous rigid-body and superfluid behavior in the ground state and uncover that the res…
Collision and coalescence dynamics of bosonic quantum Hall droplets
State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, School of Physical Science and Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学物理科学与技术学院信息光子学与光通信国家重点实验室）
Breakdown of the single-mode description of ultradilute quantum droplets in binary Bose mixtures: A perspective from a microscopic bosonic pairing theory
We demonstrate the existence of a new type of spatially localized excitations in the unitary Fermi gas: spin polarized droplets with a peculiar internal structure involving the abrupt change of the pairing phase at the surface of the droplet. It resembles the structure of the Josephson-$π$ junction occurring when a slice of a ferromagnet is sandwiched between two superconductors. The stability of the impurity is enhanced by the mutual interplay between the polarization effects and the pairing field, resulting in an exceptionally long-lived state. The prospects for its realization in experiment…
Formation Dynamics of Quantum Droplets for Homonuclear and Heteronuclear Mixtures
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul（南里奥格兰德联邦大学物理研究所）；Departamento de Psiquiatria, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul（南里奥格兰德联邦大学精神病学系）
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In this article, we illustrate the scaling properties of a family of solutions for N attractive bosonic atoms in the limit of large $N$. These solutions represent the quantized dynamics of solitonic degrees of freedom in atomic droplets. In dimensions lower than two, or $d=2-ε$, we demonstrate that the number of isotropic droplet states scales as $N^{3/2}/ε^{1/2}$, and for $ε=0$, or $d=2$, scales as ${N^2}$. The ground state energies scale as $N^{2 / ε+ 1}$ in $d=2-ε$, and when $d=2$, scale as an exponential function of N. We obtain the universal energy spectra and the generalized Tjon relatio…
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We theoretically investigate the droplets formation in a tightly trapped one-dimensional dipolar gas of bosonic atoms. When the strength of the dipolar interaction becomes sufficiently attractive compared to the contact one, we show how a solitonic-like density profile evolves into a liquid-like droplet on increasing the number of particles in the trap. The incipient gas-liquid transition is also signalled by a steep increase of the breathing mode and a change in sign of the chemical potential. Upon a sudden release of the trap, varying the number of trapped atoms and the scattering length, th…
In a joint experimental and theoretical effort, we report on the formation of a macro-droplet state in an ultracold bosonic gas of erbium atoms with strong dipolar interactions. By precise tuning of the s-wave scattering length below the so-called dipolar length, we observe a smooth crossover of the ground state from a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to a dense macro-droplet state of more than $10^4$ atoms. Based on the study of collective excitations and loss features, we quantitative prove that quantum fluctuations stabilize the ultracold gas far beyond the instability threshold impose…
Self-bound quantum droplets are a newly discovered phase in the context of ultracold atoms. In this work we report their experimental realization following the original proposal by Petrov [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 155302 (2015)], using an attractive bosonic mixture. In this system spherical droplets form due to the balance of competing attractive and repulsive forces, provided by the mean-field energy close to the collapse threshold and the first-order correction due to quantum fluctuations. Thanks to an optical levitating potential with negligible residual confinement we observe self-bound dropl…
We suggest indirect excitons in 2D semiconductor heterostructures as a platform for realization of a bosonic analog of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductor. The quantum phase transition to a biexcitonic gapped state can be controlled in situ by tuning the electric field applied to the structure in the growth direction. The proposed playground should allow one to go to strongly correlated and high-temperature regimes, unattainable with Feshbach resonant atomic gases.
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We investigate the formation of self-bound quantum droplets in a one-dimensional binary mixture of bosonic atoms, applying the method of numerical diagonalization of the full Hamiltonian. The excitation spectra and ground-state pair correlations signal the formation of a few-boson droplet when crossing the region of critical inter-species interactions. The self-binding affects the rotational excitations, displaying a change in the energy dispersion from negative curvature, associated with superfluidity in the many-body limit, to a nearly parabolic curvature indicative of rigid body rotation. W…
We study the quantum fluctuations in the condensates of a mixture of bosonic atoms and molecules with interspecies p-wave interaction. Our analysis shows that the quantum phase of coexisting atomic and molecular condensates is unstable at the mean-field level. Unlike the mixture of s-wave interaction, the Lee-Huang-Yang correction of p-wave interaction is unexpectedly found here to exhibit an opposite sign with respect to its mean-field term above a critical particle density. This quantum correction to the mean-field energy provides a remarkable mechanism to self-stabilize the phase. The order…
Competing ferro- and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions may lead to the formation of bound magnon pairs in the high-field phase of a frustrated quantum magnet. With decreasing field, magnon pairs undergo a Bose-condensation prior to the onset of a conventional one-magnon instability. We develop an analytical approach to study the zero-temperature properties of the magnon-pair condensate, which is a bosonic analog of the BCS superconductors. Representation of the condensate wave-function in terms of the coherent bosonic states reveals the spin-nematic symmetry of the ground-state and allow…
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The ground-state properties of two-component bosonic mixtures in a one-dimensional optical lattice are studied both from few- and many-body perspectives. We rely directly on a microscopic Hamiltonian with attractive inter-component and repulsive intra-component interactions to demonstrate the formation of a quantum liquid. We reveal that its formation and stability can be interpreted in terms of finite-range interactions between dimers. We derive an effective model of composite bosons (dimers) which correctly captures both the few- and many-body properties and validate it against exact results…
Self-bound many-body systems are formed through a balance of attractive and repulsive forces and occur in many physical scenarios. Liquid droplets are an example of a self-bound system, formed by a balance of the mutual attractive and repulsive forces that derive from different components of the inter-particle potential. It has been suggested that self-bound ensembles of ultracold atoms should exist for atom number densities that are 10^8 times lower than in a helium droplet, which is formed from a dense quantum liquid. However, such ensembles have been elusive up to now because they require f…
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We discuss pairing of light-matter bosons under effective spin-orbit (SO) coupling in two-dimensional semiconductors. The SO coupling is shown to induce dynamical broadening of a two-body bound state. Application of a transverse magnetic field yields the rich Feshbach resonance phenomenology. We predict quantum bosonic halos with a synthetic angular momentum L=2. The d-wave-like dressing of the nominally s-wave bound state is induced by SO coupling to the continuum in the open channel. The fundamental properties of the emergent quantum number remain to be explored.
We study weakly interacting mixtures of ultracold atoms composed of bosonic and fermionic species in 2D and 1D. When interactions between particles are appropriately tuned, self-bound quantum liquids can be formed. We show that while formation of these droplets in 2D is due to the higher order correction terms contributing to the total energy and originating in quantum fluctuations, in 1D geometry the quantum fluctuations have a negligible role on formation of the self-bound systems. The leading mean-field interactions are then sufficient for droplet formation in 1D. We analyse stability condi…
