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arXiv:1307.5153 · Physical Review Letters

Pairing in Few-Fermion Systems with Attractive Interactions

G. Zürn, A. N. Wenz, Simon Murmann, Andrea Bergschneider, Thomas Lompe, Selim Jochim

Published Oct 22, 2013• 179 citations
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Abstract

We study quasi-one-dimensional few-particle systems consisting of one to six ultracold fermionic atoms in two different spin states with attractive interactions. We probe the system by deforming the trapping potential and by observing the tunneling of particles out of the trap. For even particle numbers, we observe a tunneling behavior that deviates from uncorrelated single-particle tunneling indicating the existence of pair correlations in the system. From the tunneling time scales, we infer the differences in interaction energies of systems with different number of particles, which show a strong odd-even effect, similar to the one observed for neutron separation experiments in nuclei.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.111.175302

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This thesis reports on experiments with few-fermion systems in quasi one dimensional confining potentials with tunable interaction. \nUsing ultracold atoms we prepare these systems in a well defined quantum state with fidelities of 90% for up to 8 particles. The interparticle interaction in the 1D environment can be effectively described by a 1D contact interaction where the coupling strength can be tuned with a confinement induced resonance (CIR). \nWe investigate a system of two repulsively interacting distinguishable fermions and compare it to a system of two identical noninteracting fermions. For diverging coupling strength we show the fermionization of two distinguishable fermions, i.e. we observe the energy and the square modulus of the wavefunction of both system to be identical. We also perform radio frequency spectroscopy to measure the energy of a single minority particle interacting repulsively with a defined number of majority particles of different spin. We study the crossover from a few-particle system to a many-particle system by adding majority particles one by one. \nWe observe that already four majority particles are enough to describe the properties of the minority by that of a polaron-like particle, i.e. by a single impurity dressed by a 1D Fermi sea. \nInvestigating attractively interacting systems we observe that for increasing interaction strength the pair correlations in the system increases. This correlation leads to a strong odd-even effect of the single particle dissociation energy similar to the one observed for nuclei.
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We study a strongly attractive system of a few spin-(1/2) fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, interacting via two-body contact potential. Performing exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian we analyze the ground state and the thermal state of the system in terms of one- and two-particle reduced density matrices. We show how for strong attraction the correlated pairs emerge in the system. We find that the fraction of correlated pairs depends on temperature and we show that this dependence has universal properties analogous to the gap function known from the theory of superconductivity. In contrast to the standard approach based on the variational ansatz and/or perturbation theory, our predictions are exact and are valid also in a strong-attraction limit. Our findings contribute to the understanding of strongly correlated few-body systems and can be verified in current experiments on ultra-cold atoms.
Few- and many-fermion systems on the verge of stability, and consisting of strongly interacting particles, appear in many areas of physics. The theoretical modeling of such systems is a very difficult problem. In this work we present a theoretical framework that is based on the rigged Hilbert space formulation. The few-body problem is solved by exact diagonalization using a basis in which bound, resonant, and non-resonant scattering states are included on an equal footing. Current experiments with ultracold atoms offer a fascinating opportunity to study universal properties of few-body systems with a high degree of control over parameters such as the external trap geometry, the number of particles, and even the interaction strength. In particular, particles can be allowed to tunnel out of the trap by applying a magnetic-field gradient that effectively lowers the potential barrier. The result is a tunable open quantum system that allows detailed studies of the tunneling mechanism. In this Paper we introduce our method and present results for the decay rate of two distinguishable fermions in a one-dimensional trap as a function of the interaction strength. In particular, we present for the first time several technical and numerical details of our approach, recently published in Lundmark et al. (Phys Rev A 91:041601, 2015). We also show results from a careful analysis of the numerical convergence.
For NNN spin-polarized fermions with harmonic pair interactions in a one-dimensional trap an odd-even effect is found. The spectrum of the one-particle reduced density matrix of the system's ground state differs qualitatively for NNN odd and NNN even. This effect only occurs for strong attractive and repulsive interactions. Since it does not exist for bosons, it must originate from the repulsive nature implied by the fermionic exchange statistics. In contrast to the spectrum, the one-particle density and correlation function for strong attractive interactions do not show any sensitivity on the number parity. This also suggests that reduced-density-matrix-functional theory has a more subtle NNN dependency than density-functional theory.
We present one-dimensional simulation results for the cold-atom tunneling experiments by the Heidelberg group [Z\"urn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 075303 (2012); Z\"urn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 175302 (2013)] on one or two 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li atoms confined by a potential that consists of an approximately harmonic optical trap plus a linear magnetic-field gradient. At the noninteracting particle level, we find that the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation may not be used as a reliable tool to extract the trapping potential parameters from the experimentally measured tunneling data. We use our numerical calculations along with the experimental tunneling rates for the noninteracting system to reparametrize the trapping potential. The reparametrized trapping potentials serve as input for our simulations of two interacting particles. For two interacting (distinguishable) atoms on the upper branch, we reproduce the experimentally measured tunneling rates, which vary over several orders of magnitude, fairly well. For infinitely strong interaction strength, we compare the time dynamics with that of two identical fermions and discuss the implications of fermionization on the dynamics. For two attractively interacting atoms on the molecular branch, we find that single-particle tunneling dominates for weakly attractive interactions, while pair tunneling dominates for strongly attractive interactions. Our first set of calculations yields qualitative but not quantitative agreement with the experimentally measured tunneling rates. We obtain quantitative agreement with the experimentally measured tunneling rates if we allow for a weakened radial confinement.