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arXiv:1511.05123 · Physical Review A

Diffusion Monte Carlo study of strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi gases

Alexander Galea, Hillary Dawkins, Stefano Gandolfi, Alexandros Gezerlis

Published Feb 1, 2016• 41 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ultracold atomic Fermi gases have been a popular topic of research, with attention being paid recently to two-dimensional (2D) gases. In this work, we perform $T=0$ ab initio diffusion Monte Carlo calculations for a strongly interacting two-component Fermi gas confined to two dimensions. We first go over finite-size systems and the connection to the thermodynamic limit. After that, we illustrate pertinent 2D scattering physics and properties of the wave function. We then show energy results for the strong-coupling crossover, in between the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regimes. Our energy results for the BEC-BCS crossover are parametrized to produce an equation of state, which is used to determine Tan's contact. We carry out a detailed comparison with other microscopic results. Finally, we calculate the pairing gap for a range of interaction strengths in the strong coupling regime, following from variationally optimized many-body wave functions.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.023602

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Quantum degenerate Fermi gases can be created in the laboratories using alkali atoms. These gases can be in different regimes of density and interaction strength and provide an ideal test bed for the basic properties of the quantum and statistical mechanics. Also some astrophysical objects such as neutron stars can be idealized as interacting fermion systems. In this thesis work, the ground state properties of dilute Fermi gases with attractive short range two-body interactions are reported. Main results of this work are produced by application of quantum Monte Carlo methods. We introduce variational nodal structure to the trial wave function in order to deal with the fermion sign problem. We consider the possibility of Cooper pairing between fermions of different species. The strength of the interaction is varied to study different pairing regimes which are characterized by the product of the s-wave scattering length a and the Fermi wave vector kF. We also review some of the conventional variational methods such as the Lowest Order Constrained Variational which is suitable for Fermi fluids without pairing correlation. The ground state energy, pairing gap Δ, quasi-particle spectrum, two-body distribution function, and momentum distribution of the superfluid were studied with greater accuracy using ab initio quantum Monte Carlo techniques. In the case of the two component Fermi fluid, we find that in the weak coupling regime, 1/akF < -1, the system is a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer type superfluid and the energy gap Δ is much smaller than the Fermi gas energy EFG. For 1/akF ≥ 0:5 we find that weakly interacting composite bosons or molecules are formed in the superfluid gas with Δ and gas energy per particle approaching half of the molecular energy jEmolj=2. In this region we seem to have Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules. The behavior of the energy, chemical potential and energy gap in the transition region, -0:5 < 1/akF < 0:5, is discussed. The study is extended to the three component Fermi fluid in relation to the spin polarized alkali gases and color superconductivity of the quark matter. Unlike the two component fluids, zero potential range limit cannot be reached without causing collapse of the system. We also study the scaling behavior of the three-body system. We calculate the threshold of the three-body bound state as a function of the potential range and strength. For the many-body systems, we find that ground state can be achieved by broken symmetry pairing. However, the restored symmetry pairing scenario in the strongly interacting regime is not conclusive. We also discuss the pairing gap as well as the structural properties such as two-body distribution functions.

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Ultracold atomic Fermi gases have been a popular topic of research, with attention being paid recently to two-dimensional (2D) gases. In this work, we perform T=0T=0T=0 ab initio diffusion Monte Carlo calculations for a strongly interacting two-component Fermi gas confined to two dimensions. We first go over finite-size systems and the connection to the thermodynamic limit. After that, we illustrate pertinent 2D scattering physics and properties of the wave function. We then show energy results for the strong-coupling crossover, in between the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regimes. Our energy results for the BEC-BCS crossover are parametrized to produce an equation of state, which is used to determine Tan's contact. We carry out a detailed comparison with other microscopic results. Finally, we calculate the pairing gap for a range of interaction strengths in the strong coupling regime, following from variationally optimized many-body wave functions.
This work studies zero-temperature Fermi gases with short-ranged and attractive interactions with focus on the dimensionality aspects by confining the system from three to two dimensions. Interacting Fermi gases are superfluids characterized as being strongly correlated if the scattering length is much larger than the other scales present. In the many-body context, this category of systems requires a careful treatment since mean-field approaches are not expected to hold under the conditions which define the strong pairing. For this reason, we employ quantum Monte Carlo methods to study the dimensionality effects in two-component Fermi gases in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein condensate (BCS-BEC) crossover. To be able to investigate such aspects, we consider a three-dimensional gas with periodic boundary conditions in the xy plane and a confining potential in the z direction capable of reducing the dimensionality of the system, which defines a dimensional BCS-BEC crossover. We calculate the equation of state as the energy per particle as a function of the dimensionality and as a function of the interaction parameter, which are characterized by the oscillator length in the z direction and the scattering length respectively. The greater confinement in the system lowers the interparticle distances, which increases the effects of the attractive interactions between antiparallel-spin fermions.We also calculate the density profile in the z direction over the crossover for different confinements and different interaction parameters to quantify their influence on the spatial distribution of the particles. This study connects the perspectives between theoretical and experimental works in low-dimensional ultracold Fermi gases by utilizing an approach that is similar to what it is realized in modern experiments.
We investigate the crossover from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a two-dimensional Fermi gas at T=0 using the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method. We calculate the equation of state and the gap parameter as a function of the interaction strength, observing large deviations compared to mean-field predictions. In the BEC regime our results show the important role of dimer-dimer and atom-dimer interaction effects that are completely neglected in the mean-field picture. Results on Tan's contact parameter associated with short-range physics are also reported along the BCS-BEC crossover.
We report results of quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the ground state of dilute Fermi gases with attractive short-range two-body interactions. The strength of the interaction is varied to study different pairing regimes which are characterized by the product of the sss-wave scattering length and the Fermi wave vector, akFa{k}_{F}akF​. We report results for the ground-state energy, the pairing gap $\ensuremath{\Delta}$, and the quasiparticle spectrum. In the weak-coupling regime, $1∕a{k}_{F}<\ensuremath{-}1$, we obtain Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid and the energy gap $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ is much smaller than the Fermi gas energy EFG{E}_{\mathrm{FG}}EFG​. When a>0a>0a>0, the interaction is strong enough to form bound molecules with energy Emol{E}_{\mathrm{mol}}Emol​. For $1∕a{k}_{F}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.5$, we find that weakly interacting composite bosons are formed in the superfluid gas with $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ and gas energy per particle approaching $\ensuremath{\mid}{E}_{\mathrm{mol}}\ensuremath{\mid}∕2$. In this region, we seem to have Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of molecules. The behavior of the energy and the gap in the BCS-to-BEC transition region, $\ensuremath{-}0.5<1∕a{k}_{F}<0.5$, is discussed.
We investigate the crossover from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a two-dimensional Fermi gas at T = 0 using the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method. We calculate the equation of state and the gap parameter as a function of the interaction strength, observing large deviations compared to mean-field predictions. In the BEC regime our results show the important role of dimer-dimer and atom-dimer interaction effects that are completely neglected in the mean-field picture. We also consider the highly polarized gas and the competition between a polaronic and a molecular picture.
In this Thesis we will theoretically address some issues concerning the Physics of ultracold Fermi gases, all of them with experimental relevance. The field of ultracold gases, and more recently of ultracold Fermi gases, is gathering a lot of experimental and theoretical interest for two main reasons: the great control on the relevant parameters of the problem and the relative simplicity of the minimal theory which is able to correctly describe the system. Building upon this solid background, ultracold gases provided an ideal laboratory for testing more refined theories and also for addressing fundamental issues of quantum mechanics as well as for simulating more complex physical systems such as those encountered in condensed matter. Even if the effective hamiltonian of ultracold gases can be simple, due to the diluteness of the system and the low temperature, which imply low energy physics, the solution of the quantum mechanic equations governing the state of these systems is not always simple. For the static properties usually mean-field solutions exist or perturbative expansions can be produced in some regimes. However Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) techniques provide more accurate results especially in the strongly interacting regimes. For confined systems it is possible to use QMC only for a few particles, so that, for large number of particles, a fruitful combined use of Density Functional Theory (DFT) and QMC is necessary. The study of the dynamics of ultracold gases has received little attention with QMC techniques, due to the intrinsic computational difficulty of the many-body problem, so that general hydrodynamic equations are often used for studying the propagation of smoothly varying perturbations. In this Thesis we use QMC techniques for studying the problem of ferromagnetism in repulsive or effectively repulsive ultracold gases without a lattice and the problem of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein-Condensation (BCS-BEC) crossover in two dimensions. We use DFT in the Local Density Approximation (LDA) for calculating the density profiles of ultracold Fermi gases in harmonic magneto-optical traps, starting from QMC equations of state. We study the propagation of first and second sound in ultracold Fermi gases in cylindrical geometry, using the hydrodynamic equations of superfluids.
Quantum degenerate Fermi gases can be created in the laboratories using alkali atoms. These gases can be in different regimes of density and interaction strength and provide an ideal test bed for the basic properties of the quantum and statistical mechanics. Also some astrophysical objects such as neutron stars can be idealized as interacting fermion systems. In this thesis work, the ground state properties of dilute Fermi gases with attractive short range two-body interactions are reported. Main results of this work are produced by application of quantum Monte Carlo methods. We introduce variational nodal structure to the trial wave function in order to deal with the fermion sign problem. We consider the possibility of Cooper pairing between fermions of different species. The strength of the interaction is varied to study different pairing regimes which are characterized by the product of the s-wave scattering length a and the Fermi wave vector kF. We also review some of the conventional variational methods such as the Lowest Order Constrained Variational which is suitable for Fermi fluids without pairing correlation. The ground state energy, pairing gap Δ, quasi-particle spectrum, two-body distribution function, and momentum distribution of the superfluid were studied with greater accuracy using ab initio quantum Monte Carlo techniques. In the case of the two component Fermi fluid, we find that in the weak coupling regime, 1/akF < -1, the system is a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer type superfluid and the energy gap Δ is much smaller than the Fermi gas energy EFG. For 1/akF ≥ 0:5 we find that weakly interacting composite bosons or molecules are formed in the superfluid gas with Δ and gas energy per particle approaching half of the molecular energy jEmolj=2. In this region we seem to have Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules. The behavior of the energy, chemical potential and energy gap in the transition region, -0:5 < 1/akF < 0:5, is discussed. The study is extended to the three component Fermi fluid in relation to the spin polarized alkali gases and color superconductivity of the quark matter. Unlike the two component fluids, zero potential range limit cannot be reached without causing collapse of the system. We also study the scaling behavior of the three-body system. We calculate the threshold of the three-body bound state as a function of the potential range and strength. For the many-body systems, we find that ground state can be achieved by broken symmetry pairing. However, the restored symmetry pairing scenario in the strongly interacting regime is not conclusive. We also discuss the pairing gap as well as the structural properties such as two-body distribution functions.