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arXiv:1404.7762 · Physical Review A

Pairing of a few Fermi atoms in one dimension

Pino D’Amico, Massimo Rontani

Published Apr 9, 2015• 36 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study a few Fermi atoms interacting through attractive contact forces in a one-dimensional trap by means of numerical exact diagonalization. From the combined analysis of energies and wave functions of correlated ground and excited states we find evidence of BCS-like pairing even for very few atoms. For moderate interaction strength, we reproduce the even-odd oscillation of the separation energy observed in Z\"urn, Wenz, Murmann, Bergschneider, Lompe, and Jochim, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 175302 (2013). For strong interatomic attraction the arrangement of dimers in the trap differs from the homogeneous case as a consequence of Pauli blockade in real space.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.043610

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•Jan 1, 2013•6 citations
We study a few Fermi atoms interacting through attractive contact forces in a one-dimensional trap by means of numerical exact diagonalization. From the combined analysis of energies and wave functions of correlated ground and excited states we find evidence of BCS-like pairing even for very few atoms. For moderate interaction strength, we reproduce the even-odd oscillation of the separation energy observed in Z"urn, Wenz, Murmann, Bergschneider, Lompe, and Jochim, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 175302 (2013). For strong interatomic attraction the arrangement of dimers in the trap differs from the homogeneous case as a consequence of Pauli blockade in real space.
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.
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.
We explore a few-fermion mixture consisting of two components that are repulsively interacting and confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. Different scenarios of population imbalance ranging from the completely imbalanced case where the physics of a single impurity in the Fermi sea is discussed to the partially imbalanced and equal population configurations are investigated. For the numerical calculations the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method is employed, extending its application to few-fermion systems. Apart from numerical calculations we generalize our ansatz for a correlated pair wave function proposed recently [I. Brouzos and P. Schmelcher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 045301 (2012)] for bosons to mixtures of fermions. From weak to strong coupling between the components the energies, the densities and the correlation properties of one-dimensional systems change vastly with an upper limit set by fermionization where for infinite repulsion all fermions can be mapped to identical ones. The numerical and analytical treatments are in good agreement with respect to the description of this crossover. We show that for equal populations each pair of different component atoms splits into two single peaks in the density while for partial imbalance additional peaks and plateaus arise for very strong interaction strengths. The case of a single-impurity atom shows rich behavior of the energy and density as we approach fermionization and is directly connected to recent experiments [G. Z\"urn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 075303 (2012)].
We present a density-functional theory for the one-dimensional harmonically trapped Bose-Fermi mixture with repulsive contact interactions. The ground-state density distribution of each component is obtained by solving the Kohn-Sham equations numerically based on the local density approximation and the exact solution for the homogeneous system given by Bethe ansatz method. It is shown that for sufficiently strong interaction, a considerable amount of fermions are repelled out of the central region of the trap, exhibiting partial phase separation of Bose and Fermi components. Oscillations emerge in the Bose density curves, reflecting the strong correlation with fermions. For infinitely strong interaction, the ground-state energy of the mixture and the total density are consistent with the scenario that all atoms in the mixture are fully fermionized.
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.