We consider the two-dimensional Fermi gas at finite temperature with attractive short-range interactions. Using the virial expansion, which provides a controlled approach at high temperatures, we determine the spectral function and contact for the normal state. Our calculated spectra are in qualitative agreement with recent photoemission measurements [M. Feld et al., Nature (London) 480, 75 (2011).], thus suggesting that the observed pairing gap is a feature of the high-temperature gas rather than being evidence of a pseudogap regime just above the superfluid transition temperature. We further argue that the strong pair correlations result from the fact that the crossover to bosonic dimers occurs at weaker interactions than previously assumed.
We consider the two-dimensional Fermi gas at finite temperature with attractive short-range interactions. Using the virial expansion, which provides a controlled approach at high temperatures, we determine the spectral function and contact for the normal state. Our calculated spectra are in qualitative agreement with recent photoemission measurements [M. Feld et al., Nature (London) 480, 75 (2011).], thus suggesting that the observed pairing gap is a feature of the high-temperature gas rather than being evidence of a pseudogap regime just above the superfluid transition temperature. We further argue that the strong pair correlations result from the fact that the crossover to bosonic dimers occurs at weaker interactions than previously assumed.
In a recent experiment [M. Feld et al., Nature (London) 480, 75 (2011); B. Fr\"ohlich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 130403 (2012)], a pairing gap was detected in a two-dimensional (2D) Fermi gas with attractive interaction at temperatures where superfluidity does not occur. The question remains open as to whether this gap is a pseudogap phenomenon or is due to a molecular state. In this paper, by using a $t\ensuremath{-}\text{matrix}$ approach, we reproduce quite well the experimental data for a 2D Fermi gas, and set the boundary between the pseudogap and molecular regimes. We also show that pseudogap phenomena occurring in 2D and 3D can be related through a variable spanning the BCS-BEC crossover in a universal way.
The two-species Fermi gas with attractive short-range interactions in two spatial dimensions provides a paradigmatic system for the understanding of strongly correlated Fermi superfluids in two dimensions. It is known to exhibit a BEC to BCS crossover as a function of ln(k_{F}a), where a is the scattering length, and to undergo a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless superfluid transition below a critical temperature T_{c}. However, the extent of a pseudogap regime in the strongly correlated regime of ln(k_{F}a)∼1, in which pairing correlations persist above T_{c}, remains largely unexplored with controlled theoretical methods. Here, we use finite-temperature auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo methods on discrete lattices in the canonical ensemble formalism to calculate thermodynamical observables in the strongly correlated regime. We extrapolate to continuous time and the continuum limit to eliminate systematic errors and present results for particle numbers ranging from N=42 to N=162. We estimate T_{c} by a finite-size scaling analysis, and observe clear pseudogap signatures above T_{c} and below a temperature T^{*} in both the spin susceptibility and free-energy gap. We also present results for the contact, a fundamental thermodynamic property of quantum many-body systems with short-range interactions.
We investigate theoretically the many-body pairing of a strongly correlated two-dimensional Fermi gas with and without negative confinement-induced effective range. Using a strong-coupling effective field theory in the normal state, we show that the specific heat at constant volume can be used as a characteristic indicator of the crossover from the normal Fermi liquid to the pseudogap state in two dimensions. We calculate the pseudogap formation temperature through the specific heat at constant volume, examining the role of a negative confinement-induced effective range on many-body pairing above the superfluid transition. We compare our results with and without effective range to the recent experimental measurement performed with radio-frequency spectroscopy in Murthy et al. [P. A. Murthy, M. Neidig, R. Klemt, L. Bayha, I. Boettcher, T. Enss, M. Holten, G. Z\"urn, P. M. Preiss, and S. Jochim, Science 359, 452 (2018)]. Although a good qualitative agreement is found, we are not able to discriminate the effect of the confinement-induced effect range in the experimental data.
We determine the thermodynamic properties and the spectral function for a homogeneous two-dimensional Fermi gas in the normal state using the Luttinger-Ward, or self-consistent T-matrix, approach. The density equation of state deviates strongly from that of the ideal Fermi gas even for moderate interactions, and our calculations suggest that temperature has a pronounced effect on the pressure in the crossover from weak to strong coupling, consistent with recent experiments. We also compute the superfluid transition temperature for a finite system in the crossover region. There is a pronounced pseudogap regime above the transition temperature: the spectral function shows a Bogoliubov-like dispersion with backbending, and the density of states is significantly suppressed near the chemical potential. The contact density at low temperatures increases with interaction and compares well with both experiment and zero-temperature Monte Carlo results.
We theoretically investigate strong-coupling properties of a two-dimensional Fermi gas in the normal phase. Including pairing fluctuations within the framework of a self-consistent T -matrix approximation, we calculate the single-particle density of states (DOS) near the observed Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition temperature T BKT . We show that the pseudogap phenomenon associated with strong pairing fluctuations appears as an almost fully gapped single-particle density of states in the strong-coupling regime, indicating that amplitude fluctuations of the order parameter are almost absent and the system is dominated by phase fluctuations of the order parameter, as expected in a two-dimensional system near T BKT . On the other hand, although pairing fluctuations are enhanced by the low-dimensionality of the system, they are found to be still not strong enough to open such a full gap in the intermediate coupling (crossover) regime. In this regime, a dip structure is only seen in DOS around ω = 0, indicating that amplitude of the superfluid order parameter is also fluctuating, in addition to phase fluctuations. In theoretically determining T BKT in a two-dimensional Fermi gas, it is frequently assumed that, while phase fluctuations exist, the amplitude of the superfluid order parameter is fixed. However, our results indicate the necessity of including both amplitude and phase fluctuations of the order parameter in evaluating T BKT in the crossover region. Since the BKT phase transition has recently been reported in a two-dimensional 6 Li Fermi gas, our results would be useful for the theoretical study of this observed novel Fermi superfluid and effects of strong low-dimensional pairing fluctuations.
The spectral function of a spin-balanced two-dimensional Fermi gas with short-range interactions is calculated by means of a quantum cluster expansion. Good qualitative agreement is found with a recent experiment by Feld et al. [Nature (London) 480, 75 (2011)]. The effects of pairing are clearly visible in the density of states, which displays a suppression of spectral weight due to the formation of a two-body bound state. In addition, the momentum distribution and the radio-frequency spectrum are derived, which are in excellent agreement with exact universal results. It is demonstrated that in the limit of high temperature, the quasiparticle excitations are well defined, allowing for a kinetic description of the gas.