Abstract Strongly interacting particles in one dimension subject to external confinement have become a topic of considerable interest due to recent experimental advances and the development of new theoretical methods to attack such systems. In the case of equal mass fermions or bosons with two or more internal degrees of freedom, one can map the problem onto the well-known Heisenberg spin models. However, many interesting physical systems contain mixtures of particles with different masses. Therefore, a generalization of the recent strong-coupling techniques would be highly desirable. This is particularly important since such problems are generally considered non-integrable and thus the hugely successful Bethe ansatz approach cannot be applied. Here we discuss some initial steps towards this goal by investigating small ensembles of one-dimensional harmonically trapped particles where pairwise interactions are either vanishing or infinitely strong with focus on the mass-imbalanced case. We discuss a (semi)-analytical approach to describe systems using hyperspherical coordinates where the interaction is effectively decoupled from the trapping potential. As an illustrative example we analyze mass-imbalanced four-particle two-species mixtures with strong interactions between the two species. For such systems we calculate the energies, densities and pair-correlation functions.
Abstract Strongly interacting particles in one dimension subject to external confinement have become a topic of considerable interest due to recent experimental advances and the development of new theoretical methods to attack such systems. In the case of equal mass fermions or bosons with two or more internal degrees of freedom, one can map the problem onto the well-known Heisenberg spin models. However, many interesting physical systems contain mixtures of particles with different masses. Therefore, a generalization of the recent strong-coupling techniques would be highly desirable. This is particularly important since such problems are generally considered non-integrable and thus the hugely successful Bethe ansatz approach cannot be applied. Here we discuss some initial steps towards this goal by investigating small ensembles of one-dimensional harmonically trapped particles where pairwise interactions are either vanishing or infinitely strong with focus on the mass-imbalanced case. We discuss a (semi)-analytical approach to describe systems using hyperspherical coordinates where the interaction is effectively decoupled from the trapping potential. As an illustrative example we analyze mass-imbalanced four-particle two-species mixtures with strong interactions between the two species. For such systems we calculate the energies, densities and pair-correlation functions.
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)].
Abstract In this paper we study a mixed system of bosons and fermions with up to six particles in total. All particles are assumed to have the same mass. The two-body interactions are repulsive and are assumed to have equal strength in both the Bose–Bose and the Fermi–Boson channels. The particles are confined externally by a harmonic oscillator one-body potential. For the case of four particles, two identical fermions and two identical bosons, we focus on the strongly interacting regime and analyze the system using both an analytical approach and density matrix renormalization group calculations using a discrete version of the underlying continuum Hamiltonian. This provides us with insight into both the ground state and the manifold of excited states that are almost degenerate for large interaction strength. Our results show great variation in the density profiles for bosons and fermions in different states for strongly interacting mixtures. By moving to slightly larger systems, we find that the ground state of balanced mixtures of four to six particles tends to separate bosons and fermions for strong (repulsive) interactions. On the other hand, in imbalanced Bose–Fermi mixtures we find pronounced odd–even effects in systems of five particles. These few-body results suggest that question of phase separation in one-dimensional confined mixtures are very sensitive to system composition, both for the ground state and the excited states.
We investigate one-dimensional harmonically trapped two-component systems for repulsive interaction strengths ranging from the non-interacting to the strongly interacting regime for Fermi-Fermi and Bose-Fermi mixtures. Energies, density profiles and correlation functions are obtained both numerically (DMRG and Exact diagonalization) and analytically. In order to facilitate a direct comparison with DMRG, we introduce a mapping of the energies calculated from a discrete lattice Hamiltonian to that of a continuous Hamiltonian, and show that our DMRG calculations can match the ground state energy for the two-component fermion systems even in the strongly interacting limit. The same is not true for the other features of the ground state and the DMRG method we employ produces unrealistic results when the interaction strength becomes large. Since DMRG results do not converge as the interaction strength is increased, analytical solutions are used as a benchmark to identify the point where the strongly interacting limit is reached numerically in which reasonable agreement between DMRG and analytical results can be obtained. In the case of Bose-Fermi mixtures, we find that the ground state of balanced mixtures of four or six particles tends to separate bosons and fermions, while in imbalanced Bose-Fermi mixtures we find pronounced odd-even effects in systems of four or five particles. These few-body results suggest that question of phase separation in one-dimensional confined mixtures are very sensitive to system composition.
Recent theoretical and experimental progress on studying one-dimensional systems of bosonic, fermionic, and Bose-Fermi mixtures of a few ultracold atoms confined in traps is reviewed in the broad context of mesoscopic quantum physics. We pay special attention to limiting cases of very strong or very weak interactions and transitions between them. For bosonic mixtures, we describe the developments in systems of three and four atoms as well as different extensions to larger numbers of particles. We also briefly review progress in the case of spinor Bose gases of a few atoms. For fermionic mixtures, we discuss a special role of spin and present a detailed discussion of the two- and three-atom cases. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different computation methods applied to systems with intermediate interactions. In the case of very strong repulsion, close to the infinite limit, we discuss approaches based on effective spin chain descriptions. We also report on recent studies on higher-spin mixtures and inter-component attractive forces. For both statistics, we pay particular attention to impurity problems and mass imbalance cases. Finally, we describe the recent advances on trapped Bose-Fermi mixtures, which allow for a theoretical combination of previous concepts, well illustrating the importance of quantum statistics and inter-particle interactions. Lastly, we report on fundamental questions related to the subject which we believe will inspire further theoretical developments and experimental verification.
Abstract Fragmentation of bosons and pairs in a trapped imbalanced bosonic mixture is investigated analytically using an exactly solvable model, the generic harmonic-interaction model for mixtures. Closed-form expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the reduced one-particle and two-particle density matrices as a function of all parameters, the masses, numbers of bosons, and the intraspecies and interspecies interactions, are obtained and analyzed. As an application, we consider a system made of N 1 = 100 non-interacting species 1 bosons embedded in a bath made of N 2 = 106 non-interacting species 2 bosons, and show how fragmentation of the system’s bosons and pairs emerges from the system–bath interaction only. Interestingly, the lighter the bosons comprising the bath are the stronger is the system’s fragmentation. Further applications are briefly discussed.
The nature of strongly interacting Fermi gases and magnetism is one of the most important and studied topics in condensed-matter physics. Still, there are many open questions. A central issue is under what circumstances strong short-range repulsive interactions are enough to drive magnetic correlations. Recent progress in the field of cold atomic gases allows one to address this question in very clean systems where both particle numbers, interactions and dimensionality can be tuned. Here we study fermionic few-body systems in a one dimensional harmonic trap using a new rapidly converging effective-interaction technique, plus a novel analytical approach. This allows us to calculate the properties of a single spin-down atom interacting with a number of spin-up particles, a case of much recent experimental interest. Our findings indicate that, in the strongly interacting limit, spin-up and spin-down particles want to separate in the trap, which we interpret as a microscopic precursor of one-dimensional ferromagnetism in imbalanced systems. Our predictions are directly addressable in current experiments on ultracold atomic few-body systems.