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arXiv:1805.07160 · Physical Review A

Dynamical vanishing of the order parameter in a confined Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer Fermi gas after an interaction quench

S. Hannibal, P. Kettmann, Mihail D Croitoru, V. M. Axt, T. Kühn

Published Jan 17, 2018• 26 citations
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Abstract

We present a numerical study of the Higgs mode in an ultracold confined Fermi gas after an interaction quench and find a dynamical vanishing of the superfluid order parameter. Our calculations are done within a microscopic density-matrix approach in the Bogoliubov--de Gennes framework which takes the three-dimensional cigar-shaped confinement explicitly into account. In this framework, we study the amplitude mode of the order parameter after interaction quenches starting on the BCS side of the BEC-BCS crossover close to the transition and ending in the BCS regime. We demonstrate the emergence of a dynamically vanishing superfluid order parameter in the spatiotemporal dynamics in a three-dimensional trap. Further, we show that the signal averaged over the whole trap mirrors the spatiotemporal behavior and allows us to systematically study the effects of the system size and aspect ratio on the observed dynamics. Our analysis enables us to connect the confinement-induced modifications of the dynamics to the pairing properties of the system. Finally, we demonstrate that the signature of the Higgs mode is contained in the dynamical signal of the condensate fraction, which, therefore, might provide a new experimental access to the nonadiabatic regime of the Higgs mode.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.013619

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•Mar 16, 2018•0 citations
We present a numerical study of the Higgs mode in an ultracold confined Fermi gas after an interaction quench and find a dynamical vanishing of the superfluid order parameter. Our calculations are done within a microscopic density-matrix approach in the Bogoliubov--de Gennes framework which takes the three-dimensional cigar-shaped confinement explicitly into account. In this framework, we study the amplitude mode of the order parameter after interaction quenches starting on the BCS side of the BEC-BCS crossover close to the transition and ending in the BCS regime. We demonstrate the emergence of a dynamically vanishing superfluid order parameter in the spatiotemporal dynamics in a three-dimensional trap. Further, we show that the signal averaged over the whole trap mirrors the spatiotemporal behavior and allows us to systematically study the effects of the system size and aspect ratio on the observed dynamics. Our analysis enables us to connect the confinement-induced modifications of the dynamics to the pairing properties of the system. Finally, we demonstrate that the signature of the Higgs mode is contained in the dynamical signal of the condensate fraction, which, therefore, might provide a new experimental access to the nonadiabatic regime of the Higgs mode.
We present a numerical study of the interaction quench dynamics in a superfluid ultracold Fermi gas confined in a three-dimensional cigar-shaped harmonic trap. In the present paper, we investigate the amplitude mode of the superfluid order parameter after interaction quenches, which start deep in the BCS phase and end in the BCS-BEC-crossover regime. To this end, we exploit the Bogoliubov--de Gennes formalism, which takes the confinement potential explicitly into account and provides a microscopic fully coherent description of the system. We find an anharmonic nonlinear oscillation of the modulus of the superfluid order parameter, i.e., of the Higgs mode. This oscillation persists for large times with only a small amplitude modulation being visible. We connect the frequency and the mean value of this oscillation with the breaking of Cooper pairs in the superfluid phase. Additionally, we demonstrate that the occurrence of this persistent oscillation is connected to the onset of chaotic dynamics in our model. Finally, we calculate an interaction quench phase diagram of the Higgs mode for quenches on the BCS side of the BCS-BEC crossover and discuss its properties as a function of the aspect ratio of the cigar-shaped trap.
We present a numerical study of the dynamic response of a confined superfluid Fermi gas to a rapid change of the scattering length (i.e., an interaction quench). Based on a fully microscopic time-dependent density-matrix approach within the full Bogoliubov--de Gennes formalism that includes a 3D harmonic confinement we simulate and identify the emergence of a Goldstone mode of the BCS gap in a cigar-shaped 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li gas. By analyzing this Goldstone mode over a wide range of parameters, we show that its excitation spectrum is gapless and that its main frequency is not fixed by the trapping potential but that it is determined by the details of the quench. Thus we report the emergence of a pure Goldstone mode of the BCS gap that---in contrast to situations in many previous studies---maintains its gapless excitation spectrum predicted by the Goldstone theorem. Furthermore, we observe that the size-dependent superfluid resonances resulting from the atypical BCS-BEC crossover have a direct impact on this Goldstone mode. Finally, we find that the interaction quench-induced Goldstone mode leads to a low-frequency in-phase oscillation of the single-particle occupations with complete inversion of the lowest-lying single-particle states which could provide a convenient experimental access to the pure gapless Goldstone mode.
In quantum many-body systems with spontaneous breaking of continuous symmetries, Higgs modes emerge as collective amplitude oscillations of order parameters. Recently, Higgs mode has been observed in the ultracold Fermi gas. In the present paper, we use the time-dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations to investigate Higgs amplitude oscillations of the superfluid order parameter in a Fermi gas induced by a rapid change of the s{\it s}s-wave scattering length. In particular, we investigate the Higgs mode with different values of the initial scattering length. We find that the energy of the Higgs mode coincides with the threshold energy of the pair-breaking excitation, and exponent of the power-low decay of the Higgs mode γγγ continuously changes between γ=−1/2γ=-1/2γ=−1/2 and γ=−3/2γ=-3/2γ=−3/2 through the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-Bose-Einstein condensation (BCS-BEC) crossover. Moreover, we propose the optimal ramp speed of the scattering length for observing the clearest Higgs oscillations.
The Higgs amplitude mode of the order parameter of an ultracold confined Fermi gas in the BCS regime after a quench of the coupling constant is analyzed theoretically. A characteristic feature is a damped oscillation which at a certain transition time changes into a rather irregular dynamics. We compare the numerical solution of the full set of nonlinear equations of motion for the normal and anomalous Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitations with a linearized approximation. In doing so the transition time as well as the difference between resonant systems, i.e., systems where the Fermi energy is close to a sub-band minimum, and off-resonant systems can be well understood and traced back to the system and geometry parameters.
The Higgs amplitude mode of the order parameter of an ultracold confined Fermi gas in the BCS regime after a quench of the coupling constant is analyzed theoretically. Characteristic features are a damped oscillation which at a certain transition time changes into a rather irregular dynamics. We compare the numerical solution of the full set of nonlinear equations of motion for the normal and anomalous Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitations with a linearized approximation. In doing so the transition time as well as the difference between resonant systems, i.e., systems where the Fermi energy is close to a subband minimum, and off-resonant systems can be well understood and traced back to the system and geometry parameters.
A new field of research, which gained interest in the past years, is the field of non- equilibrium physics of strongly interacting fermionic systems. In this thesis we present a novel apparatus to study an ultracold strongly interacting superfluid Fermi gas driven out of equilibrium. In more detail, we study the excitation of a collective mode, the Higgs mode, and the dynamics occurring after a rapid quench of the interaction strength. Ultracold gases are ideal candidates to explore the physics of strongly interacting Fermi gases due to their purity and the possibility to continuously change many different system parameters, such as the interaction strength. The novel apparatus enabling the experiments outlined below is built from scratch. The setup is described and characterized in detail. We produce a fermionic superfluid of 4 × 10^6 6Li atoms at a temperature of T/T_F = 0.07 ± 0.02, where T_F is the Fermi temperature. This is achieved within 23 s by a combination of laser cooling, radio frequency evaporation of 23Na and simultaneous sympathetic cooling of 6Li in an optical plugged magnetic trap and subsequent evaporative cooling of 6Li in a dipole trap. In this thesis we provide the first experimental evidence of the Higgs mode in a strongly interacting Fermi gas in the crossover from a BCS superfluid to a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate. We develop a novel excitation method, which directly couples to the amplitude of the order parameter. This is achieved by continuously changing the population of one spin component by driving a radio frequency transition to a previously unoccupied third hyperfine state. This effectively modulates the interaction strength and the amplitude of the order parameter. We spectroscopically observe a resonance behavior at twice the gap frequency. For strong coupling, the peak width broadens and eventually the Higgs mode disappears when the Cooper pairs turn into tightly bound dimers signaling the instability of the Higgs mode. It has been suggested that the Higgs mode frequency is a precise measure of the superconducting gap in the BEC-BCS crossover, where the exact value of the gap is yet unknown and numerical calculations are challenging. Hence, our novel method provides a unique technique to determine the superconducting gap. Moreover, we perform rapid variations of the interaction parameter and vary both the initial interaction strength and the amplitude of the quench. The rapid quenches are performed by rapidly transferring one spin component of a two-component spin mixture into a third state with a different interaction strength by using a radio frequency transition. Using this novel method, we can perform the quenches in half the Fermi time, which is experimentally very close to a sudden change and to date faster than any other research group performing interaction quenches with ultra cold gases. In the experiment, we observe a fast relaxation to a zero order parameter for large quenches, whereas for small quenches we observe, after a sudden drop, a revival of the order parameter and equilibration to a long-term superfluid steady state. Our measurement provides the first evidence of the collapse and subsequent revival of order in a strongly interacting fermionic system.