We investigate the superfluidity of a two-component Fermi gas with spin-orbital-angular-momentum coupling (SOAMC). Due to the intricate interplay of SOAMC, two-photon detuning and atom-atom interaction, a family of vortex ground states emerge in a broad parameter regime of the phase diagram, in contrast to the usual case where an external rotation or magnetic field is generally required. More strikingly, an unprecedented vortex state, which breaks the continuous rotational symmetry to a discrete one spontaneously, is predicted to occur. The underlying physics are elucidated and verified by numerical simulations. The unique density distributions of the predicted vortex states enable a direct observation in experiment.
The experimental realization of quantum degenerate cold Fermi gases with large hyperfine spins opens up a new opportunity for exotic many-body physics.
We have studied the exotic superfluid phases of degenerated Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling in a mixed dimensional system, where the motion of atoms are free in the x-direction and the tunneling between nearest tubes in the y-direction is permitted. Using the mean-field method, we obtain the phase diagrams of the system during the dimensional crossover between quasi one dimension to quasi two dimension. We find the existence of the topological state and Majorana edge mode in the weak tunneling case, and a rich phase diagram including two kinds of nodal superfluid phase and gapped superflu…
We study the rotational (yrast) spectra of dilute two-component atomic Bose gases in the low angular momentum regime, assuming equal interspecies and intraspecies interaction. Our analysis employs the composite fermion (CF) approach including a pseudospin degree of freedom. While the CF approach is not {\it a priori} expected to work well in this angular momentum regime, we show that composite fermion diagonalization gives remarkably accurate approximations to low energy states in the spectra. For angular momenta $0 < L < M$ (where $N$ and $M$ denote the numbers of particles of the two species…
Tuning interactions in the spin singlet and quintet channels of two colliding atoms could change the symmetry of the one-dimensional spin-3/2 fermionic systems of ultracold atoms while preserving the integrability. Here we find a novel $SO(4)$ symmetry integrable point in thespin-3/2 Fermi gas and derive the exact solution of the model using the Bethe ansatz. In contrast to the model with $SU(4)$ and $SO(5)$ symmetries, the present model with $SO(4)$ symmetry preserves spin singlet and quintet Cooper pairs in two sets of $SU(2)\otimes SU(2)$ spin subspaces. We obtain full phase diagrams, inclu…
Coherently driven atomic gases inside optical cavities hold great promise for generating rich dynamics and exotic states of matter. It was shown recently that an exotic topological superradiant state exists in a two-component degenerate Fermi gas coupled to a cavity, where local order parameters coexist with global topological invariants. In this work, we characterize in detail various properties of this exotic state, focusing on the feedback interactions between the atoms and the cavity field. In particular, we demonstrate that cavity-induced interband coupling plays a crucial role in inducin…
A key manifestation of superfluidity in liquids and gases is a reduction of the moment of inertia under slow rotations. Non-classical rotational effects have been searched for a long time also for the elusive supersolid phase of matter, in which superfluidity coexists with a lattice structure. Here we show that the recently discovered supersolid phase in dipolar quantum gases features a reduced moment of inertia. We study a peculiar rotational oscillation mode in a harmonic potential, the scissors mode, already employed for superfluids. From the measured moment of inertia, we infer a superflui…
Atomic Fermi gases have been an ideal platform for simulating conventional and engineering exotic physical systems owing to their multiple tunable control parameters. Here we investigate the effects of mixed dimensionality on the superfluid and pairing phenomena of a two-component ultracold atomic Fermi gas with a short-range pairing interaction, while one component is confined on a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice whereas the other is in a homogeneous 3D continuum. We study the phase diagram and the pseudogap phenomena throughout the entire BCS-BEC crossover, using a pairing fluctuation t…
The interplay of spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splitting in ultracold Fermi gases gives rise to a topological superfluid phase in two spatial dimensions that can host exotic Majorana excitations. Theoretical models have so far been based on a four-band Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism for the combined spin-1/2 and particle-hole degrees of freedom. Here we present a simpler, yet accurate, two-band description based on a well-controlled projection technique that provides a new platform for exploring analogies with chiral p-wave superfluidity and detailed future studies of spatially non-uniform si…
A two-component Bose-Einstein condensate confined in an axially-symmetric potential with two local minima, resembling two concentric annular traps, is investigated. The system shows a number of quantum phase transitions that result from the competition between phase coexistence, and radial/azimuthal phase separation. The ground-state phase diagram, as well as the rotational properties, including the (meta)stability of currents in this system, are analysed.
The rotational properties of a mixture of two distinguishable Bose gases that are confined in a ring potential provide novel physical effects that we demonstrate in this study. Persistent currents are shown to be stable for a range of the population imbalance between the two components at low angular momentum. At higher values of the angular momentum, even small admixtures of a second species of atoms make the persistent currents highly fragile.
We propose a simple experimental scheme to realize simultaneously the one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling and the staggered spin-flip in ultracold pseudospin-$1/2$ atomic Fermi gases trapped in square optical lattices. In the absence of interspecies interactions, the system supports gapped Chern insulators and gapless topological semimetal states. By turning on the $s$-wave interactions, a rich variety of gapped and gapless inhomogeneous topological superfluids can emerge. In particular, a gapped topological Fulde-Ferrell superfluid, in which the chiral edge states at opposite boundaries posse…
The rotation of two-component Fermi gases and the subsequent appearance of vortices have been the subject of numerous experimental and theoretical studies. Recent experimental advances in hyperfine state-dependent potentials and highly degenerate heteronuclear Fermi gases suggest that it would be feasible to create component-dependent rotation potentials in future experiments. In this study we use an effective field theory for Fermi gases to consider the effects of rotating only one component of the Fermi gas. We find that the superfluid band gap in bulk exists up to higher rotation frequencie…
We study a one-dimensional two-component atomic Fermi gas with an infinite intercomponent contact repulsion. It is found that adding an attractive resonant odd-wave interaction breaking the rotational symmetry one can make the ground state ferromagnetic. A promising system for the observation of this itinerant ferromagnetic state is a 1D gas of $^{40}$K atoms, where 3D $s$-wave and $p$-wave Feshbach resonances are very close to each other and the 1D confinement significantly reduces the inelastic decay.
We present a technique for engineering quantum magnets via ultracold polar molecules in optical lattices and explore exotic interplay between its spin superfluidity and solidity. The molecular ground and first excited rotational states are resonantly coupled by a linearly polarized microwave field. The spin-up (spin-down) states are presented by molecular rotational states of electric dipole moment along (against) the coupling field. By controlling the angle between the lattice direction and the coupling field, the inter-site interaction can be tuned from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic. Fu…
Topological superfluid, new quantum matter that possesses gapless exotic excitations known as Majorana fermions, has attracted extensive attention recently. These excitations, which can encode topological qubits, could be crucial ingredients for fault-tolerant quantum computation. However, creating and manipulating multiple Majorana fermions remain an ongoing challenge. Loading a topologically protected system in multi-layer structures would be a natural and simple way to achieve this goal. Here we investigate the system of bilayer Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling and show that the topolog…
We experimentally realize the spin-tensor momentum coupling (STMC) using the three ground Zeeman states coupled by three Raman laser beams in ultracold atomic system of $^{40}$K Fermi atoms. This new type of STMC consists of two bright-state bands as a regular spin-orbit coupled spin-1/2 system and one dark-state middle band. Using radio-frequency spin-injection spectroscopy, we investigate the energy band of STMC. It is demonstrated that the middle state is a dark state in the STMC system. The realized energy band of STMC may open the door for further exploring exotic quantum matters.
The study of ultracold atomic Fermi gases is a rapidly exploding subject which is defining new directions in condensed matter and atomic physics. Quite generally what makes these gases so important is their remarkable tunability and controllability. Using a Feshbach resonance one can tune the attractive two-body interactions from weak to strong and thereby make a smooth crossover from a BCS superfluid of Cooper pairs to a Bose-Einstein condensed superfluid. Furthermore, one can tune the population of the two spin states, allowing observation of exotic spin-polarized superfluids, such as the Fu…
We show that double-quantum spin vortices, which are characterized by doubly quantized circulating spin currents and unmagnetized filled cores, can exist in the ground states of SU(3) spin-orbit coupled Bose gases. It is found that the SU(3) spin-orbit coupling and spin-exchange interaction play important roles in determining the ground-state phase diagram. In the case of effective ferromagnetic spin interaction, the SU(3) spin-orbit coupling induces a three-fold degeneracy to the magnetized ground state, while in the antiferromagnetic spin interaction case, the SU(3) spin-orbit coupling break…
We theoretically predict a new topological matter - topological inhomogeneous Fulde-Ferrell superfluid - in one-dimensional atomic Fermi gases with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling near s-wave Feshbach resonances. The realization of such a spin-orbit coupled Fermi system has already been demonstrated recently by using a two-photon Raman process and the extra one-dimensional confinement is easy to achieve using a tight two-dimensional optical lattice. The topological Fulde-Ferrell superfluid phase is characterized by a nonzero center-of-mass momentum and a non-trivial Berry phas…
Versatile controllability of interactions in ultracold atomic and molecular gases has now reached an unprecedented era where quantum correlations and unconventional many-body phases can be studied with no corresponding analogs in solid state systems. Recent experiments in Rydberg atomic gases have achieved exquisite control over non-local interactions, allowing novel quantum phases unreachable with the usual local interactions in atomic systems. Here, we study Rydberg dressed atomic fermions in a three dimensional optical lattice predicting the existence of hitherto unheard-of exotic mixed top…
P-wave interaction in cold atoms may give rise to exotic topological superfluids. However, the realization of p-wave interaction in cold atom system is experimentally challenging. Here we propose a simple scheme to synthesize effective $p$-wave interaction in conventional $s$-wave interacting quantum gases. The key idea is to load atoms into spin-dependent optical lattice potential. Using two concrete examples involving spin-1/2 fermions, we show how the original system can be mapped into a model describing spinless fermions with nearest neighbor p-wave interaction, whose ground state can be a…
It is quite common that several different phases exist simultaneously in a system of trapped quantum gases of ultra-cold atoms. One such example is the strongly-interacting Fermi gas with two imbalanced spin species, which has received a great amount of attention due to the possible presence of exotic superfluid phases. By employing novel numerical techniques and algorithms, we self-consistently solve the Bogoliubov de-Gennes equations, which describe Fermi superfluids in the mean-field framework. From this study, we investigate the novel phases of spin-imbalanced Fermi gases and examine the v…
Spin-orbit coupling plays an important role in understanding exotic quantum phases. In this work, we present a scheme to combine spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM) coupling and strong correlations in ultracold atomic gases. Essential ingredients of this setting is the interplay of SOAM coupling and Raman-induced spin-flip hopping, engineered by lasers that couples different hyperfine spin states. In the presence of SOAM coupling only, we find rich quantum phases in the Mott-insulating regime, which support different types of spin defects such as spin vortex and composite vortex with antiferr…
Supersolid is a long-sought exotic phase of matter, which is characterized by the coexistence of a diagonal long-range order of solid and an off-diagonal long-range order of superfluid. Possible candidates to realize such a phase have been previously considered, including hard-core bosons with long-range interaction and soft-core bosons. Here we demonstrate that an ultracold atomic condensate of hard-core bosons with contact interaction can establish a supersolid phase when simultaneously subjected to spin-orbit coupling and a spin-dependent periodic potential. This supersolid phase is accompa…
The recent experimental realization of synthetic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) opens a new avenue for exploring novel quantum states with ultracold atoms. However, in experiments for generating two-dimensional SOC (e.g., Rashba type), a perpendicular Zeeman field, which opens a band gap at the Dirac point and induces many topological phenomena, is still lacking. Here we theoretically propose and experimentally realize a simple scheme for generating two-dimension SOC and a perpendicular Zeeman field simultaneously in ultracold Fermi gases by tuning the polarization of three Raman lasers that couple…
Chirality represents a kind of symmetry breaking characterized by the noncoincidence of an object with its mirror image and has been attracting intense attention in a broad range of scientific areas. The recent realization of spin-orbit coupling in ultracold atomic gases provides a new perspective to study quantum states with chirality. In this Letter, we demonstrate that the combined effects of spin-orbit coupling and interatomic soft-core long-range interaction can induce an exotic supersolid phase in which the chiral symmetry is broken with spontaneous emergence of circulating particle curr…
Topological superfluids usually refer to a superfluid state which is gapped in the bulk but metallic at the boundary. Here we report that a gapless, topologically non-trivial superfluid with inhomogeneous Fulde-Ferrell pairing order parameter can emerge in a two-dimensional spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas, in the presence of both in-plane and out-of-plane Zeeman fields. The Fulde-Ferrell pairing - induced by the spin-orbit coupling and in-plane Zeeman field - is responsible for this gapless feature. This exotic superfluid has a significant Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperat…
The non-Abelian gauge fields play a key role in achieving novel quantum phenomena in condensed-matter and high-energy physics. Recently, the synthetic non-Abelian gauge fields have been created in the neutral degenerate Fermi gases, and moreover, generate many exotic effects. All the previous predictions can be well understood by the microscopic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory. In this work, we establish an SU(2) Ginzburg-Landau theory for degenerate Fermi gases with the synthetic non-Abelian gauge fields. We firstly address a fundamental problem how the non-Abelian gauge fields, imposing ori…
We propose a systematic T-matrix approach to solve few-body problems with s-wave contact interactions in ultracold atomic gases. The problem is generally reduced to a matrix equation expanded by a set of orthogonal molecular states, describing external center-of-mass motions of pairs of interacting particles; while each matrix element is guaranteed to be finite by a proper renormalization for internal relative motions. This approach is able to incorporate various scattering problems and the calculations of related physical quantities in a single framework, and also provides a physically transp…
Periodic driving of a quantum system can significantly alter its energy bands and even change the band topology, opening a completely new avenue for engineering novel quantum matter. Although important progress has been made recently in measuring topological properties of Floquet bands in different systems, direct experimental measurement of Floquet band dispersions and their topology change is still demanding. Here we directly measure Floquet band dispersions in a periodically driven spin-orbit coupled ultracold Fermi gas. Using spin injection radio-frequency spectroscopy, we observe that the…
We theoretically investigate a three-dimensional Fermi gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in the presence of both out-of-plane and in-plane Zeeman fields. We show that, driven by a sufficiently large Zeeman field, either out-of-plane or in-plane, the superfluid phase of this system exhibits a number of interesting features, including inhomogeneous Fulde-Ferrell pairing, gapped or gapless topological order and exotic quasi-particle excitations known as Weyl fermions that have linear energy dispersions in momentum space (i.e., massless Dirac fermions). The topological superfluid phase can have …
We briefly review recent progress on ultracold atomic Fermi gases with different types of synthetic spin-orbit coupling, including the one-dimensional (1D) equal weight Rashba-Dresselhaus and two-dimensional (2D) Rasbha spin-orbit couplings. Theoretically, we show how the single-body, two-body and many-body properties of Fermi gases are dramatically changed by spin-orbit coupling. In particular, the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and interatomic interaction may lead to several long-sought exotic superfluid phases at low temperatures, such as anisotropic superfluid, topological superflui…
Considering a Bose-Einstein condensed gas confined in one dimension with periodic boundary conditions, we demonstrate that, very generally, solitary-wave and rotational excitations coincide. This exact equivalence allows us to establish connections between a number of effects that are present in these two problems, many of which have been studied using the mean-field approximation.
We investigate properties of exotic pairing states in a three-dimensional Fermi gas with three-dimensional spin-orbit coupling and an effective Zeeman field. The interplay of spin-orbit coupling, effective Zeeman field and pairing can lead to first-order phase transitions between different phases, and to interesting nodal superfluid states with gapless surfaces in the momentum space. We then demonstrate that pairing states with zero center-of-mass momentum are unstable against finite center-of-mass momentum Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states, with the center-of-mass momentum of the…
Advances in pure optical trapping techniques now allow the creation of degenerate Bose gases with internal degrees of freedom. Systems such as ${}^{87}$Rb, $^{39}$K or ${}^{23}$Na in the $F=1$ hyperfine state offer an ideal platform for studying the interplay of superfluidity and quantum magnetism. Motivated by the experimental developments, we study ground state phases of a two-component Bose gas loaded on an optical lattice. The system is described effectively by the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with onsite and near neighbor spin-spin interactions. An important feature of our investigation is th…
I review recent studies that predict quantum liquid-crystalline orders in resonant atomic gases. As examples of such putative systems I will discuss an s-wave resonant imbalanced Fermi gas and a p-wave resonant Bose gas. In the former, the liquid-crystalline smectic, nematic and rich variety of other descendant states emerge from strongly quantum- and thermally- fluctuating Fulde-Ferrell and Larkin-Ovchinnikov states, driven by a competition between resonant pairing and Fermi-surface mismatch. In the latter, at intermediate detuning the p-wave resonant interaction generically drives Bose-conde…
We briefly review the recent progress of theories and experiments on spin-orbital-angular-momentum (SOAM)-coupled quantum gases. The coupling between the intrinsic degree of freedom of particles and their external orbital motions widely exists in universe, and leads to a broad variety of fundamental phenomena both in the classical physics and quantum mechanics. Recent realization of synthetic SOAM coupling in cold atoms has attracted a great deal of attention, and stimulates a large amount of considerations on exotic quantum phases in both Bose and Fermi gases. In this review, we present a bas…
Orbital degree of freedom plays a fundamental role in understanding the unconventional properties in solid state materials. Experimental progress in quantum atomic gases has demonstrated that high orbitals in optical lattices can be used to construct quantum emulators of exotic models beyond natural crystals, where novel many-body states such as complex Bose-Einstein condensation and topological semimetals emerge. A brief introduction of orbital degree of freedom in optical lattices is given and a summary of exotic orbital models and resulting many-body phases is provided. Experimental consequ…
A forthcoming challenge in ultracold lattice gases is the simulation of quantum magnetism. That involves both the preparation of the lattice atomic gas in the desired spin state and the probing of the state. Here we demonstrate how a probing scheme based on atom-light interfaces gives access to the order parameters of nontrivial quantum magnetic phases, allowing us to characterize univocally strongly correlated magnetic systems produced in ultracold gases. This method, which is also nondemolishing, yields spatially resolved spin correlations and can be applied to bosons or fermions. As a proof…
We use the mean-field theory to analyze the ground-state phase diagrams of spin-orbit coupled mass-imbalanced Fermi gases throughout the BCS-BEC evolution, including both the population-balanced and -imbalanced systems. Our calculations show that the competition between the mass and population imbalance and the Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC) gives rise to very rich phase diagrams, involving normal, superfluid and phase separated regions. In addition, we find quantum phase transitions between the topologically trivial gapped superfluid and the nontrivial gapless superfluid phases, openin…
We investigate the effect of dipolar interactions in one-dimensional systems in connection with the possibility of observing exotic many-body effects with trapped atomic and molecular dipolar gases. By combining analytical and numerical methods, we show how the competition between short- and long-range interactions gives rise to frustrating effects which lead to the stabilization of spontaneously dimerized phases characterized by a bond-ordering. This genuine quantum order is sharply distinguished from Mott and spin-density wave phases, and can be unambiguously probed by measuring non local or…
Cold atomic gases have proven capable of emulating a number of fundamental condensed matter phenomena including Bose-Einstein condensation, the Mott transition, Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov pairing and the quantum Hall effect. Cooling to a low enough temperature to explore magnetism and exotic superconductivity in lattices of fermionic atoms remains a challenge. We propose a method to produce a low temperature gas by preparing it in a disordered potential and following a constant entropy trajectory to deliver the gas into a non-disordered state which exhibits these incompletely understood …
We construct a variational wave function to study whether a fully polarized Fermi sea is energetically stable against a single spin flip. Our variational wave function contains sufficient short-range correlation at least to the same level as Gutzwiller's projected wave function. For Hubbard lattice model and continuum model with pure repulsive interaction, we show a fully polarized Fermi sea is generally unstable even when the repulsive strength becomes infinite. While for a resonance model, ferromagnetic state is possible if the s-wave scattering length is positive and sufficiently large, and…
We theoretically predict an exotic topological superfluid state with spatially modulated pairing gap in one-dimensional spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases. This inhomogeneous topological superfluidity is induced by applying simultaneously a perpendicular Zeeman magnetic field and an equally weighted Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling in one-dimensional optical lattices. Based on the self-consistent Bogoliubov--de Gennes theory, we confirm that this novel topological phase is a unique condensation of Cooper pairs, which manifests the interplay between the inhomogeneity of superfluid and its…
Since the discovery of topological insulators, many topological phases have been predicted and realized in a range of different systems, providing both fascinating physics and exciting opportunities for devices. And although new materials are being developed and explored all the time, the prospects for probing exotic topological phases would be greatly enhanced if they could be realized in systems that were easily tuned. The flexibility offered by ultracold atoms could provide such a platform. Here, we review the tools available for creating topological states using ultracold atoms in optical …
Ultracold two-component Fermi gases with a tunable population imbalance have provided an excellent opportunity for studying the exotic Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states, which have been of great interest in condensed matter physics. However, the FFLO states have not been observed experimentally in Fermi gases in three dimensions (3D), possibly due to their small phase space volume and extremely low temperature required for an equal-mass Fermi gas. Here we explore possible effects of mass imbalance, mainly in a $^6$Li--$^{40}$K mixture, on the one-plane-wave FFLO phases for a 3D ho…
We propose a model for realizing exotic paired states in cold atomic Fermi gases. By using a {\it spin dependent} optical lattice it is possible to engineer spatially anisotropic Fermi surfaces for each hyperfine species, that are rotated 90 degrees with respect to one another. We consider a balanced population of the fermions with an attractive interaction. We explore the BCS mean field phase diagram as a function of the anisotropy, density, and interaction strength, and find the existence of an unusual paired superfluid state with coexisting pockets of momentum space with gapless unpaired ca…
The recent experimental realization of spin-orbit (SO) coupling for ultracold bosons and fermions opens an exciting avenue for engineering quantum matter that may be challenging to realize in solid state materials such as SO coupled spin-1 fermions. While one-dimensional SO coupling for spin-1 bosons has been experimentally realized, the generation of two-dimensional (2D) SO coupling and its topological properties are largely unexplored. Here we propose an experimental scheme for realizing a 2D Dresselhaus-type SO coupling in a square lattice for spin-1 Fermi gases. Because of the extended spi…
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 report the realization of a robust and highly controllable two-dimensional (2D) spin-orbit (SO) coupling with topological non-trivial band structure. By applying a retro-reflected 2D optical lattice, phase tunable Raman couplings are formed into the anti-symmetric Raman lattice structure, and generate the 2D SO coupling with precise inversion and $C_4$ symmetries, leading to considerably enlarged topological regions. The life time of the 2D SO coupled Bose-Einstein condensate reaches several seconds, which enables the exploring of fine tuning interaction effects. These essential advantages …
A spin-1 atomic gas in an optical lattice, in the unit-filling Mott Insulator (MI) phase and in the presence of disordered spin-dependent interaction, is considered. In this regime, at zero temperature, the system is well described by a disordered rotationally-invariant spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic model. We study, via the density matrix renormalization group algorithm, a bounded disorder model such that the spin interactions can be locally either ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. Random interactions induce the appearance of a disordered ferromagnetic phase characterized by a non-vanishing va…
We study the rotational properties of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensed gas of distinguishable atoms which are confined in a ring potential using both the mean-field approximation, as well as the method of diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that the angular momentum may be given to the system either via single-particle, or "collective" excitation. Furthermore, despite the complexity of this problem, under rather typical conditions the dispersion relation takes a remarkably simple and regular form. Finally, we argue that under certain conditions the dispersion re…
Pairing in an attractively interacting two-component Fermi gas in the absence of the inversion symmetry and/or the time-reversal symmetry may give rise to exotic superfluid states. Notable examples range from the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state with a finite center-of-mass momentum in a polarized Fermi gas, to the topological superfluid state in a two-dimensional Fermi gas under Rashba spin-orbit coupling and an out-of-plane Zeeman field. Here, we show that a topological FFLO state can be stabilized in a two-dimensional Fermi gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and both in-plane …
The conventional spin density wave (SDW) phase (Overhauser, 1962), as found in antiferromagnetic metal for example (Fawcett 1988), can be described as a condensate of particle-hole pairs with zero angular momentum, $\ell=0$, analogous to a condensate of particle-particle pairs in conventional superconductors. While many unconventional superconductors with Cooper pairs of finite $\ell$ have been discovered, their counterparts, density waves with non-zero angular momenta, have only been hypothesized in two-dimensional electron systems (Nayak, 2000). Using an unbiased functional renormalization g…
In a spinor Bose-Einstein gas, the non-zero hyperfine spin of the gas becomes an accessible degree of freedom. At low temperature, such a gas shows both magnetic and superfluid order, and undergoes both density and spin dynamics. These lecture notes present a general overview of the properties of spinor Bose-Einstein gases. The notes are divided in five sections. In the first, we summarize basic properties of multi-component quantum fluids, focusing on the specific case of spinor Bose-Einstein gases and the role of rotational symmetry in defining their properties. Second, we consider the magne…
We investigate exotic paired states of spin-imbalanced Fermi gases in anisotropic lattices, tuning the dimension between one and three. We calculate the finite temperature phase diagram of the system using real-space dynamical mean-field theory in combination with the quantum Monte Carlo method. We find that regardless of the intermediate dimensions examined, the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state survives to reach about one third of the BCS critical temperature of the spin-density balanced case. We show how the gapless nature of the state found is reflected in the local spectral fu…