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arXiv:1104.2102 · Physical Review A

Precision benchmark calculations for four particles at unitarity

Shahin Bour, Xin Li, Dean Lee, Ulf-G. Meißner, Luboš Mitáš

Published Jun 15, 2011• 22 citations
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Abstract

The unitarity limit describes interacting particles where the range of the interaction is zero and the scattering length is infinite. We present precision benchmark calculations for two-component fermions at unitarity using three different ab initio methods: Hamiltonian lattice formalism using iterated eigenvector methods, Euclidean lattice formalism with auxiliary-field projection Monte Carlo methods, and continuum diffusion Monte Carlo methods with fixed and released nodes. We have calculated the ground-state energy of the unpolarized four-particle system in a periodic cube as a dimensionless fraction of the ground-state energy for the noninteracting system. We obtain values of $0.211(2)$ and $0.210(2)$ using two different Hamiltonian lattice representations, $0.206(9)$ using Euclidean lattice formalism, and an upper bound of $0.212(2)$ from fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo methods. Released-node calculations starting from the fixed-node result yield a decrease of less than $0.002$ over a propagation of $0.4{E}_{F}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ in Euclidean time, where ${E}_{F}$ is the Fermi energy. We find good agreement among all three ab initio methods.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.83.063619

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The unitarity limit describes interacting particles where the range of the interaction is zero and the scattering length is infinite. We present precision benchmark calculations for two-component fermions at unitarity using three different ab initio methods: Hamiltonian lattice formalism using iterated eigenvector methods, Euclidean lattice formalism with auxiliary-field projection Monte Carlo methods, and continuum diffusion Monte Carlo methods with fixed and released nodes. We have calculated the ground-state energy of the unpolarized four-particle system in a periodic cube as a dimensionless fraction of the ground-state energy for the noninteracting system. We obtain values of 0.211(2)0.211(2)0.211(2) and 0.210(2)0.210(2)0.210(2) using two different Hamiltonian lattice representations, 0.206(9)0.206(9)0.206(9) using Euclidean lattice formalism, and an upper bound of 0.212(2)0.212(2)0.212(2) from fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo methods. Released-node calculations starting from the fixed-node result yield a decrease of less than 0.0020.0020.002 over a propagation of 0.4EF\ensuremath−10.4{E}_{F}^{\ensuremath{-}1}0.4EF\ensuremath−1​ in Euclidean time, where EF{E}_{F}EF​ is the Fermi energy. We find good agreement among all three ab initio methods.
We consider two-component fermions on the lattice in the unitarity limit. This is an idealized limit of attractive fermions where the range of the interaction is zero and the scattering length is infinite. Using Euclidean time projection, we compute the ground state energy using four computationally different but physically identical auxiliary-field methods. The best performance is obtained using a bounded continuous auxiliary field and a nonlocal updating algorithm called the hybrid Monte Carlo. With this method, we calculate results for 10 and 14 fermions at lattice volumes 43,53,63,73,83{4}^{3},{5}^{3},{6}^{3},{7}^{3},{8}^{3}43,53,63,73,83 and extrapolate to the continuum limit. For 10 fermions in a periodic cube, the ground state energy is 0.292(12)0.292(12)0.292(12) times the ground state energy for noninteracting fermions. For 14 fermions, the ratio is 0.329(5)0.329(5)0.329(5).
We present calculations for spin $ 1/2 $ fermions at unitarity limit, where the effective range of the interaction is zero and the scattering length is infinite. We compute the ground-state energy for a system of 6, 10,14,18 and 20 particles, with equal numbers of up and down spins in a periodic cube in the full ground-state constrained-path Monte Carlo (CPMC) method using the extended, attractive Hubbard model. Our results in a careful extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit may suggest that the ratio of the ground-state energy to that of a free Fermi gas is $ ξ= 0.43(4) $, which can compare with recent experimental results and consistent with the fixed node Green's function Monte Carlo and novel lattice approaches results. We also obtain results for interactions with different effective ranges and find that the energy is consistent with a universal linear dependence on the product of the Fermi momentum and the effective range.
We calculate the ground-state properties of an unpolarized two-component Fermi gas with the aid of the diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) methods. Using an extrapolation to the zero effective range of the attractive two-particle interaction, we find E/EfreeE/{E}_{\mathrm{free}}E/Efree​ in the unitary limit to be 0.212(2), 0.407(2), 0.409(3), and 0.398(3) for 4, 14, 38, and 66 atoms, respectively. Our calculations indicate that the dependence of the total energy on the effective range of the interaction Reff{R}_{\mathrm{eff}}Reff​ is sizable and the extrapolation to Reff=0{R}_{\mathrm{eff}}=0Reff​=0 is therefore important for reaching the true unitary limit. To test the quality of nodal surfaces and to estimate the impact of the fixed-node approximation, we perform released-node DMC calculations for 4 and 14 atoms. Analysis of the released-node and the fixed-node results suggests that the main sources of the fixed-node errors are long-range correlations, which are difficult to sample in the released-node approaches due to the fast growth of the bosonic noise. Besides energies, we evaluate the two-body density matrix and the condensate fraction. We find that the condensate fraction for the 66-atom system converges to 0.56(1) after the extrapolation to the zero interaction range.
We investigate the e↵ect of a spherical cuto↵ in the single particle momentum on the lattice calculations of unitary fermions, and use this to explore the ground state configuration. The unitarity limit, corresponding to an infinite s-wave scattering length and zero interaction range, is achieved by tuning the lattice coupling of four-fermi interactions to reproduce the scattering phase shift of σ = π/2 in the continuum. We particularly compute the ground state energies of three unitary fermions at zero and non-zero net momenta. We show that in the continuum limit the spherical cuto↵ does not a↵ect the results, while it violates the unitarity for a boosted pair of fermions. Our findings suggest that the pair of fermions in the ground state of three unitary fermions has zero momentum, while the total net momentum of the system is carried by the unpaired fermion.
We investigate the e↵ect of a spherical cuto↵ in the single particle momentum on the lattice calculations of unitary fermions, and use this to explore the ground state configuration. The unitarity limit, corresponding to an infinite s -wave scattering length and zero interaction range, is achieved by tuning the lattice coupling of four-fermi interactions to reproduce the scattering phase shift of σ = π/2 in the continuum. We particularly compute the ground state energies of three unitary fermions at zero and non-zero net momenta. We show that in the continuum limit the spherical cuto↵ does not a↵ect the results, while it violates the unitarity for a boosted pair of fermions. Our findings suggest that the pair of fermions in the ground state of three unitary fermions has zero momentum, while the total net momentum of the system is carried by the unpaired fermion.
Ab initio nuclear physics tackles the problem of strongly interacting four-component fermions. The same setting could foreseeably be probed experimentally in ultracold atomic systems, where two- and three-component experiments have led to major breakthroughs in recent years. Both due to the problem's inherent interest and as a pathway to nuclear physics, in this Letter we study four-component fermions at unitarity via the use of quantum Monte Carlo methods. We explore novel forms of the trial wave function and find one which leads to a ground state of the eight-particle system whose energy is almost equal to that of two four-particle systems. We investigate the clustering properties involved and also extrapolate to the zero-range limit. In addition to being experimentally testable, our results impact the prospects of developing nuclear physics as a perturbation around the unitary limit.