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arXiv:2001.05319 · New Journal of Physics

Interplay of phase separation and itinerant magnetism for correlated few fermions in a double-well

Georgios M. Koutentakis, S. I. Mistakidis, Peter Schmelcher

Published May 6, 2020• 10 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We explore the stability of the phase separation phenomenon in few-fermion spin-1/2 systems confined in a double-well potential. It is shown that within the SU(2) symmetric case, where the total spin is conserved, the phase separation cannot be fully stabilized. An interaction regime characterized by metastable phase separation emerges for intermediate interactions which is inherently related with ferromagnetic spin–spin correlations emerging within each of the wells. The breaking of the SU(2) symmetry crucially affects the stability properties of the system as the phase separated state can be stabilized even for weak magnetic potential gradients. Our results imply an intricate relation between the phenomena of phase separation and ferromagnetism that lies beyond the view of the Stoner instability.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ab90d6

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Abstract We explore the stability of the phase separation phenomenon in few-fermion spin-1/2 systems confined in a double-well potential. It is shown that within the SU(2) symmetric case, where the total spin is conserved, the phase separation cannot be fully stabilized. An interaction regime characterized by metastable phase separation emerges for intermediate interactions which is inherently related with ferromagnetic spin–spin correlations emerging within each of the wells. The breaking of the SU(2) symmetry crucially affects the stability properties of the system as the phase separated state can be stabilized even for weak magnetic potential gradients. Our results imply an intricate relation between the phenomena of phase separation and ferromagnetism that lies beyond the view of the Stoner instability.
Abstract We unravel the dynamical stability of a fully polarized one-dimensional ultracold few-fermion spin-1/2 gas subjected to inhomogeneous driving of the itinerant spins. Despite the unstable character of the total spin-polarization the existence of an interaction regime is demonstrated where the spin-correlations lead to almost maximally aligned spins throughout the dynamics. The resulting ferromagnetic order emerges from the build up of superpositions of states of maximal total spin. They comprise a decaying spin-polarization and a dynamical evolution towards an almost completely unpolarized NOON-like state. Via single-shot simulations we demonstrate that our theoretical predictions can be detected in state-of-the-art ultracold experiments.
We consider two species of bosons in one dimension near the Tonks-Girardeau limit of infinite interactions. For the case of equal masses and equal intraspecies interactions, the system can be mapped to a S=1/2 XXZ Heisenberg spin chain, thus allowing one to access different magnetic phases. Using a powerful ansatz developed for the two-component Fermi system, we elucidate the evolution from few to many particles for the experimentally relevant case of an external harmonic confinement. In the few-body limit, we already find clear evidence of both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin correlations as the ratio of intraspecies and interspecies interactions is varied. Furthermore, we observe the rapid emergence of symmetry-broken magnetic ground states as the particle number is increased. We therefore demonstrate that systems containing only a few bosons are an ideal setting in which to realize the highly sought-after itinerant ferromagnetic phase.
We consider a lattice model of itinerant electrons coupled to an array of localized classical Heisenberg spins. The nature of the ground-state-ordered magnetic phases that result from the indirect spin-spin coupling mediated by the electrons is determined as a function of density and the spin-fermion coupling JJJ. At a fixed chemical potential, spiral phases exist only up to values of JJJ which are less than roughly half the electronic bandwidth. At a fixed electron density and near half filling, the system phase-separates into a half-filled antiferromagnetic phase and a spiral phase. The ferromagnetic phases are shown to be fully polarized, while the spiral phases have equal admixture of up and down spins. Phase separation survives in the presence of weak pairing field $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ but disappears when $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ exceeds a critical value ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}}_{c}$. If pairing fields are large enough, an additional spiral state arises at strong coupling JJJ. The relevance of this study, especially the phase separation, to artificially engineered systems of adjacent itinerant electrons and localized spins is discussed. In particular, we propose a method which might allow for the braiding of Majorana fermions by changing the density and moving their location as they are pulled along by a phase separation boundary.
We explore the interspecies interaction quench dynamics of ultracold spin-polarized few-body mass-balanced Fermi-Fermi mixtures confined in a double well with an emphasis on the beyond Hartree-Fock correlation effects. It is shown that the ground state of particle-imbalanced mixtures exhibits a symmetry breaking of the single-particle density for strong interactions in the Hartree-Fock limit, which is altered within the many-body approach. Quenching the interspecies repulsion towards the strongly interacting regime, the two species phase separate within the Hartree-Fock approximation while remaining miscible in the many-body treatment. Despite their miscible character on the one-body level, the two species are found to be strongly correlated and exhibit a phase separation on the two-body level that suggests the antiferromagneticlike behavior of the few-body mixture. For particle-balanced mixtures we show that an intrawell fragmentation (filamentation) of the density occurs both for the ground state and upon quenching from weak to strong interactions, a result that is exclusively caused by the presence of strong correlations. By inspecting the two-body correlations, a phase separation of the two species is unveiled, being a precursor towards an antiferromagnetic state. Finally, we simulate in situ single-shot measurements and showcase how our findings can be retrieved by averaging over a sample of single-shot images.
We study the emergence of itinerant ferromagnetism in an ultracold atomic gas with a variable mass ratio between the up- and down-spin species. Mass imbalance breaks the SU(2) spin symmetry, leading to a modified Stoner criterion. We first elucidate the phase behavior in both the grand canonical and canonical ensembles. Second, we apply the formalism to a harmonic trap to demonstrate how a mass imbalance delivers unique experimental signatures of ferromagnetism. These could help future experiments to better identify the putative ferromagnetic state. Furthermore, we highlight how a mass imbalance suppresses the three-body loss processes that handicap the formation of a ferromagnetic state. Finally, we study the time-dependent formation of the ferromagnetic phase following a quench in the interaction strength.
We predict the phase separations of two-dimensional Fermi gases with repulsive contact-type interactions between two spin components. Using density-potential functional theory with systematic semiclassical approximations, we address the long-standing problem of itinerant ferromagnetism in realistic settings. We reveal a universal transition from the paramagnetic state at small repulsive interactions toward ferromagnetic density profiles at large interaction strengths, with intricate particle-number dependent phases in between. Building on quantum Monte Carlo results for uniform systems, we benchmark our simulations against Hartree–Fock calculations for a small number of trapped fermions. We thereby demonstrate that our employed corrections to the bare contact interaction energy and especially to the Thomas–Fermi kinetic energy functional are necessary for reliably predicting properties of trapped mesoscopic Fermi gases. The density patterns of the ground state survive at low finite temperatures and confirm the Stoner-type polarization behavior across a universal interaction parameter, albeit with substantial quantitative differences that originate in the trapping potential and the quantum-corrected kinetic energy. We also uncover a plethora of metastable configurations that are energetically comparable to the ground-state density profiles and are thus likely to be observed in experiments. We argue that our density-functional approach can be easily applied to interacting multi-component Fermi gases in general.