The ground states and collective excitations of trapped Fermion gases consisting of atoms with magnetic dipole moment are studied using a time-dependent density-matrix approach. The advantages of the density-matrix approach are that one-body and two-body observables are directly calculated using one-body and two-body density matrices and that it has a clear relation to the Hartree-Fock (HF) and time-dependent HF theory. The HF calculations show the magnetization of the gases when the dipole-dipole interaction is strong. It is shown that the tensor properties of the dipole-dipole interaction are revealed in the excitation modes associated with spin degrees of freedom.
The ground states and collective excitations of trapped Fermion gases consisting of atoms with magnetic dipole moment are studied using a time-dependent density-matrix approach. The advantages of the density-matrix approach are that one-body and two-body observables are directly calculated using one-body and two-body density matrices and that it has a clear relation to the Hartree-Fock (HF) and time-dependent HF theory. The HF calculations show the magnetization of the gases when the dipole-dipole interaction is strong. It is shown that the tensor properties of the dipole-dipole interaction are revealed in the excitation modes associated with spin degrees of freedom.
Pairing properties of a trapped fermion gas consisting of atoms with magnetic dipole moment are studied using the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov theory (HFB) and the results are compared with those obtained from the exact diagonalization approach (EDA). It is shown that HFB underestimates two-body correlations and gives quite different atom–atom correlations than the results in EDA. Extended time-dependent HFB (ETDHFB), which is derived from the truncation of equations of motion for reduced density matrices, is also applied and it is found that the difficulties of HFB can be remedied by ETDHFB.
Using the time-dependent Hartree–Fock theory (TDHF), we study the ground states of dipolar fermion gases in a spherical trap. It is found that deformed configurations which have prolate shape both in real and momentum space are energetically favored and that when the dipolar interaction is not very strong, the deformation of the gases shows a prominent shell structure at closed oscillator-shell configurations. The quadrupole and breathing modes are also studied in TDHF and it is found that these modes are little affected by the dipolar interaction when the gases have the closed-shell configurations. The effects of the two-body correlations on the ground-state properties and also on the damping of the quadrupole mode are also investigated using a time-dependent density-matrix formalism. It is found that the effects of the two-body correlations are not significant for the closed-shell configurations.
In this thesis we study the effects of the dipole-dipole interaction on the physics of ultracold quantum gases, both bosonic and fermionic, within the theoretical framework provided by the mean-field regime. This kind of interaction takes place in ultracold atomic gases (for instance 52Cr or 164Dy) due to their atomic magnetic dipole moment, and in ultracold molecular gases due to the magnetic or electric dipole moment. \n \nIn the case of quantum gases of bosonic atoms, or Bose-Einstein condensates, the dipole-dipole interaction can be studied within mean-field approximation using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, which now contains a new non-linear term due to the dipole-dipole interaction. We investigate, on the one hand dipolar condensates confined in harmonic traps, and on the other dipolar condensates confined in toroidal traps. In the harmonic geometry, our focus is on the study of the ground state and the quantized vortex state, where the density profile is characterized as well as some properties leading to the process of vortex formation, such as the critical frequency and the energy barrier that has to be overcome to bring the vortex from the surface to the centre of the gas. We finish the study of dipolar condensates in harmonic traps by dynamically simulating the precession frequency of an off-center vortex in a non-rotating condensate. \n \nIn the toroidal geometry the dipolar effects are strongly magnified when the polarization axis of the dipoles is perpendicular to the trap symmetry axis. In this case, the anisotropic structure of the density can be understood as the response of the system to the double-well effective potential along the ring. We have studied the dynamics of this system when the initial number of atoms in the left and right wells is imbalanced, predicting Josephson and self-trapping oscillations depending on the initial condition. This has led us to name this new system as Self-induced Josephson Junction. We have studied in detail the self-trapping regime and we have seen that the particle flux inversion is closely related to the crossing of vortices across the Josephson junctions. This result opens the door to establishing a more direct connection between the phase-slip regime, widely addressed in superfluid helium, and the self-trapping regime of condensates. \n \nIn the case of quantum gases of fermionic dipolar particles, we have studied how the radial quadrupole mode allows one to distinguish between hydrodynamic and collisionless regimes. We have analytically calculated the frequency of this mode in the mean-field approximation, generalizing the results from the Thomas-Fermi approximation for trapped ideal Fermi gases. On the one hand, we observe that the frequency in the hydrodynamic regime is smaller than in non-dipolar Fermi gases, while in the collisionless regime the frequency is larger or smaller than that corresponding to the non-interacting system depending on the geometry of the harmonic trap. On the other hand, we predict that reducing the trap deformation (aspect ratio) an observable jump in the frequency of the radial quadrupole mode would take place, which would correspond to the transition between the collisionless and hydrodynamic regimes, for instance when the gas undergoes the transition to the superfluid state.
Since the achievement of quantum degeneracy in gases of chromium atoms in 2004, the experimental investigation of ultracold gases made of highly magnetic atoms has blossomed. The field has yielded the observation of many unprecedented phenomena, in particular those in which long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions (DDIs) play a crucial role. In this review, we aim to present the aspects of the magnetic quantum-gas platform that make it unique for exploring ultracold and quantum physics as well as to give a thorough overview of experimental achievements. Highly magnetic atoms distinguish themselves by the fact that their electronic ground-state configuration possesses a large electronic total angular momentum. This results in a large magnetic moment and a rich electronic transition spectrum. Such transitions are useful for cooling, trapping, and manipulating these atoms. The complex atomic structure and large dipolar moments of these atoms also lead to a dense spectrum of resonances in their two-body scattering behaviour. These resonances can be used to control the interatomic interactions and, in particular, the relative importance of contact over dipolar interactions. These features provide exquisite control knobs for exploring the few- and many-body physics of dipolar quantum gases. The study of dipolar effects in magnetic quantum gases has covered various few-body phenomena that are based on elastic and inelastic anisotropic scattering. Various many-body effects have also been demonstrated. These affect both the shape, stability, dynamics, and excitations of fully polarised repulsive Bose or Fermi gases. Beyond the mean-field instability, strong dipolar interactions competing with slightly weaker contact interactions between magnetic bosons yield new quantum-stabilised states, among which are self-bound droplets, droplet assemblies, and supersolids. Dipolar interactions also deeply affect the physics of atomic gases with an internal degree of freedom as these interactions intrinsically couple spin and atomic motion. Finally, long-range dipolar interactions can stabilise strongly correlated excited states of 1D gases and also impact the physics of lattice-confined systems, both at the spin-polarised level (Hubbard models with off-site interactions) and at the spinful level (XYZ models). In the present manuscript, we aim to provide an extensive overview of the various related experimental achievements up to the present.
We develop and apply meanfield methods to two systems of significant interest in cold atom physics. The first system, and the main subject of this thesis, is a gas of polarized dipoles, in which the particles have a long range anisotropic interaction. The second system is a toroidally trapped gas that interacts via short range interactions. \n \nDipolar gases: We develop accurate techniques for dipolar Bose and Fermi gases accounting for both direct and exchange interactions. We detail an efficient numerical implementation of the meanfield treatment. \n \nWe study the thermodynamic and the first and second order correlation properties of the system. We find that exchange interactions cause the correlation functions to be anisotropic in the low temperature regime. We also find that many uniform gas thermodynamic predictions, for which direct interaction effects vanish, are qualitatively unreliable for trapped systems, most notably for oblate traps. \n \nUsing Hartree-Fock theory and analytic approximations, we examine the magnetostrictive position and momentum space distortions that occur in harmonically confined dipolar Bose and Fermi gases. The Bose gas momentum distribution distorts in the opposite sense to that of the Fermi gas. By relating exchange effects to short range correlations between the particles we discuss the energetic origin of this difference. \n \nIntroducing local momentum distortion fields, we develop a practical Hartree-Fock theory in which exchange effects are described by a local effective potential. This theory is applicable at zero and finite temperature, and is in excellent agreement with full Hartree-Fock calculations. \n \nContact gases: We show how considerable simplification of numerical results and analytical derivations can be achieved in the local density approximation using a variety of density of states techniques. \n \nWe examine the process of isentropic loading of a Bose or Fermi gas from a harmonic trap into the scale invariant toroidal regime that exhibits a high degree of system invariance when increasing the radius of the toroid. For bosons a regime of cooling is identified and we find that the Fermi gas is subjected to irreducible heating during loading, caused by the loss of one degree of freedom for thermalization.
The rapid progress in the production and cooling of molecular gases indicates that experimental studies of quantum gases with a strong dipolar interaction is soon within reach. Dipolar gases are predicted to exhibit very rich physics including quantum liquid crystal phases such as density waves as well as superfluid phases, both of which play an important role for our understanding of strongly correlated systems. Here, we investigate the zero temperature properties of the density-wave phase of a two-dimensional (2D) system of fermionic dipoles using a conserving Hartree-Fock theory. We calculate the amplitude of the density waves as a function of the dipole moment and orientation with respect to the 2D plane. The stripes give rise to a 1D Brillouin zone structure, and the corresponding quasiparticle spectrum is shown to have gapped as well as gapless regions around the Fermi surface. As a result, the system remains compressible in the density-wave phase, and it collapses for strong attraction. We show that the density waves have clear signatures in the momentum distribution and in the momentum correlations. Both can be measured in time-of-flight experiments. Finally, we discuss how the striped phase can be realized with experimentally available systems.