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arXiv:1509.04095 · Physical Review A

Itinerant chiral ferromagnetism in a trapped Rashba spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gas

Shang-Shun Zhang, Wu-Ming Liu, Han Pu

Published Apr 4, 2016• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider a repulsive two-component Fermi gas confined in a two-dimensional isotropic harmonic potential and subject to a large Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The single-particle dispersion can be tailored by the spin-orbit-coupling term, which provides an opportunity to study itinerant ferromagnetism in this system. We show that the interplay among spin-orbit coupling, correlation effect, and mean-field repulsion leads to a competition between ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic phases. The weakly correlated nonmagnetic and the ferromagnetic phases can be well described by the mean-field Hartree-Fock theory, while the transition between the ferromagnetic and a strongly correlated nonmagnetic phase is driven by beyond-mean-field quantum correlation effect. Furthermore, the ferromagnetic phase of this system possesses a chiral current density induced by the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, whose experimental signature is investigated.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.043602

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We consider a repulsive two-component Fermi gas confined in a two-dimensional isotropic harmonic potential and subject to a large Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The single-particle dispersion can be tailored by the spin-orbit-coupling term, which provides an opportunity to study itinerant ferromagnetism in this system. We show that the interplay among spin-orbit coupling, correlation effect, and mean-field repulsion leads to a competition between ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic phases. The weakly correlated nonmagnetic and the ferromagnetic phases can be well described by the mean-field Hartree-Fock theory, while the transition between the ferromagnetic and a strongly correlated nonmagnetic phase is driven by beyond-mean-field quantum correlation effect. Furthermore, the ferromagnetic phase of this system possesses a chiral current density induced by the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, whose experimental signature is investigated.
Magnetic phenomena in itinerant electron systems have been at the forefront of materials science. Here we show that the Weyl spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in three-dimensional repulsively interacting itinerant Fermi systems opens up a platform to host new itinerant magnetic phases, excitations, and phase transitions. A putative ferromagnetic state (FM) is always unstable against a stripe spiral spin density wave (S-SDW) or a stripe longitudinal SDW (LSDW) at small or large SOC strengths, respectively. The stripe-ordering wave vector is given by the nesting momentum of the two SOC-split Fermi surfaces with the same or opposite helicities at small or large SOC strengths, respectively. The LSDW is accompanied by a charge density wave (CDW) with half of its pitch. The transition from the paramagnet to the SSDW or LSDW+CDW is described by quantum Lifshitz-type actions, in sharp contrast to the Hertz-Millis types for itinerant electron systems without SOC. The collective excitations and Fermi surface reconstructions inside the SSDW and LSDW+CDW are also studied. The effects of a harmonic trap in cold-atom experiments are briefly discussed. In view of recent ground-breaking experimental advances in generating two-dimensional SOC in cold atoms, these phenomena can be observed in current or near-future cold-atom experiments even at very weak interactions. They may also be relevant to some itinerant magnetic materials with a strong SOC.
We study ferromagnetism in a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas in a harmonic trap. Within a local density approximation, the two components phase separate beyond a critical interaction strength, with one species having a higher density at the trap center. We discuss several easily observable experimental signatures of this transition. The mean-field release energy, its separate kinetic and interaction contributions, as well as the potential energy all depend on the interaction strength and contain a sharp signature of this transition. In addition, the conversion rate of atoms to molecules, arising from three-body collisions, peaks at an interaction strength just beyond the ferromagnetic transition point. We then go beyond the local density approximation and derive an energy functional that includes a term that depends on the local magnetization gradient and acts as a ``surface tension.'' Using this energy functional, we numerically study the energetics of some candidate spin textures that may be stabilized in a harmonic trapping potential at zero net magnetization. We find that a hedgehog state has a lower energy than an ``in-out'' domain-wall state in an isotropic trap. Upon inclusion of trap anisotropy we find that the hedgehog magnetization profile gets distorted due to the surface tension term, this distortion being more apparent for small atom numbers. We estimate that the magnetic dipole interaction does not play a significant role in this system. We consider possible implications for experiments on trapped 6Li^{6}\text{L}\text{i}6Li and 40K^{40}\text{K}40K gases.
We study a two-dimensional fermionic cloud of repulsive alkali-metal atoms characterized by two hyperfine states which are Rabi coupled. Within a variational Hartree–Fock scheme, we calculate analytically the ground-state energy of the system. Then we determine the conditions under which there is a quantum phase transition with spontaneous symmetry breaking from a spin-balanced configuration to a spin-polarized one, an effect known as itinerant ferromagnetism. Interestingly, we find that the transition appears when the interaction energy per particle exceedes both the kinetic energy per particle and the Rabi coupling energy. The itinerant ferromagnetism of the polarized phase is analyzed, obtaining the population imbalance as a function of interaction strength, Rabi coupling, and number density. Finally, the inclusion of a external harmonic confinement is investigated by adopting the local density approximation. We predict that a single atomic cloud can display population imbalance near the center of the trap and a fully balanced configuration at the periphery.
We study the fate of a two-dimensional system of interacting fermions with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in the dilute limit. The interactions are strongly renormalized at low densities, and give rise to various fermionic liquid crystalline phases, including a spin-density wave, an in-plane ferromagnet, and a nonmagnetic nematic phase, even in the weak-coupling limit. The nature of the ground state in the low-density limit depends on the range of the interactions: for short-range interactions it is the ferromagnet, while for dipolar interactions the nematic phase is favored. Interestingly, the ferromagnetic and nematic phases exhibit strong deviations from Fermi liquid theory, due to the scattering of the fermionic quasiparticles off long-wavelength collective modes. Thus, we argue that a system of interacting fermions with Rashba dispersion is generically a non-Fermi liquid at low densities.
We explore the trap profiles of a two-dimensional atomic Fermi gas in the presence of a Rashba spin-orbit coupling and under an adiabatic rotation. We first consider a noninteracting gas and show that the competition between the effects of Rashba coupling on the local density of single-particle states and the Coriolis effects caused by rotation gives rise to a characteristic ring-shaped density profile that survives at experimentally accessible temperatures. Furthermore, Rashba splitting of the Landau levels gives the density profiles a ziggurat shape in the rapid-rotation limit. We then consider an interacting gas under the BCS mean-field approximation for local pairing, and study the pair-breaking mechanism that is induced by the Coriolis effects on superfluidity, where we calculate the critical rotation frequencies both for the onset of pair breaking and for the complete destruction of superfluidity in the system. In particular, by comparing the results of a fully-quantum-mechanical Bogoliubov--de Gennes approach with those of a semiclassical local-density approximation, we construct extensive phase diagrams for a wide range of parameter regimes in the trap where the aforementioned competition may, e.g., favor an outer normal edge that is completely phase separated from the central superfluid core by vacuum.
We elucidate the itinerant ferromagnetism of a dipolar Fermi gas with a Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling by investigating the exotic phase diagrams. It is revealed that the dipolar interaction along with spin-orbit coupling can corroborate the formation of ferromagnetism and that the Raman coupling adversely eliminates the tendency to this ferromagnetism transition, which greatly transcends the general understanding of this subject with contact interaction only. We explore the ground states through the density and spin-flip distribution in momentum space. We calculate the transition temperatures well within the reach of an experimental system when altering the dipolar and spin-orbit-coupling strength, which paves a way to the further experimental realization.