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arXiv:2004.09400 · Physical Review A

Fermionic versus bosonic behavior of confined Wigner molecules

Eloisa Cuestas, Peter Alexander Bouvrie, A. P. Majtey

Published Mar 30, 2020• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We assess whether a confined Wigner molecule constituted by $2N$ fermions behaves as $N$ bosons or $2N$ fermions. Following the work by Law [Phys. Rev. A 71, 034306 (2005)] and Chudzicki et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 070402 (2010)] we discuss the physical meaning and the reason why a large amount of entanglement is needed in order to ensure a bosonic composite behavior. By applying a composite boson ansatz, we found that a Wigner molecule confined in a two-dimensional trap presents a bosonic behavior induced by symmetry. The two-particle Wigner molecule ground state required by the composite boson ansatz was obtained within the harmonic approximation in the strong interacting regime. Our approach allows us to address few-particle states (widely studied within a variety of theoretical and numerical techniques) as well as a large number of particles (difficult to address due to computational costs). For a large number of particles, we found strong fermionic correlations exposed by the suppression of particle fluctuations. For a small number of particles, we show that the wave function calculated within the composite boson ansatz captures the Friedel-Wigner transition. The latter is shown in a regime in which strong correlations due to the Pauli exclusion principle arise; therefore, we conclude that the coboson ansatz reproduces the many-particle physics of a confined Wigner molecule, even in the presence of strong deviations of the ideal bosonic behavior due to fermionic correlations.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.033620

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We assess whether a confined Wigner molecule constituted by 2N2N2N fermions behaves as NNN bosons or 2N2N2N fermions. Following the work by Law [Phys. Rev. A 71, 034306 (2005)] and Chudzicki et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 070402 (2010)] we discuss the physical meaning and the reason why a large amount of entanglement is needed in order to ensure a bosonic composite behavior. By applying a composite boson ansatz, we found that a Wigner molecule confined in a two-dimensional trap presents a bosonic behavior induced by symmetry. The two-particle Wigner molecule ground state required by the composite boson ansatz was obtained within the harmonic approximation in the strong interacting regime. Our approach allows us to address few-particle states (widely studied within a variety of theoretical and numerical techniques) as well as a large number of particles (difficult to address due to computational costs). For a large number of particles, we found strong fermionic correlations exposed by the suppression of particle fluctuations. For a small number of particles, we show that the wave function calculated within the composite boson ansatz captures the Friedel-Wigner transition. The latter is shown in a regime in which strong correlations due to the Pauli exclusion principle arise; therefore, we conclude that the coboson ansatz reproduces the many-particle physics of a confined Wigner molecule, even in the presence of strong deviations of the ideal bosonic behavior due to fermionic correlations.
Ultracold atomic systems provide a versatile platform for exploring quantum phenomena, offering tunable interactions and diverse trapping geometries. In this study, we investigate a one-dimensional system of trapped fermionic atoms using the composite boson formalism, which describes pairs of opposite-spin fermions as cobosons (short for composite bosons). We solve the Schr\"odinger equation for a $2\ensuremath{\uparrow}+2\ensuremath{\downarrow}$ fermionic system across a broad range of attractive and repulsive interactions by constructing the system's wave function as a superposition of two-coboson states. We determine key observables such as particle density profiles and two-body correlations. The density profiles calculated agree with both the Tonks-Girardeau and Lieb-Liniger limits and provide a portrait of the transition between those regimes. In the strong repulsive regime, the ansatz captures the Fridel-Wigner transition characterized by a doubling of the peaks in the density profiles. Additionally, we compute the low-lying energy spectrum and estimate the pairing gap. Our results highlight the usefulness of the coboson superposition ansatz for exploring quantum phenomena in strongly correlated few-body systems.
The paper reviews the theoretical and experimental progress achieved in the last 25 years in understanding the novel physics of artificial atoms and molecules as arising from the formation of Wigner molecules (WMs) of localized (to a stronger or lesser extent) fermionic or bosonic particles, which are finite quantum analogs of the more familiar bulk Wigner crystal (WC). The term artificial atoms, as used here, encompasses a broad range of recently fabricated quantum nanodevices and experimental apparatuses consisting of a finite number of mutually repelling confined particles, including two-dimensional semiconductor and moiré transition metal dichalcogenide quantum dots, as well as trapped ultracold neutral atoms or ions. These nano-sized or micro-sized artificial devices and apparatuses (in single well or multi-well of variable-shape arrangements) hold a great promise for technological applications in the field of quantum information and quantum computers, as well as for advances in fundamental many-body physics. Prominent quantum effects of Wigner molecularization (WM) are the strong quenching of the spectral energy gaps, the appearance of rovibational spectra (in analogy with natural molecules), entanglement, and pinning due to an external perturbation. In high magnetic fields or at rapid rotation, Wigner molecules (WMs) provide an alternative theory to the fractional quantum Hall effect. The physics of WMs is shown to derive from the solutions of the many-body Schrödinger equation (MBSE) in the regime of strong interparticle correlations arising from the dominance of the potential over the kinetic energy, or from a high magnetic field, as well as from a rapid rotation. With the help of a hierarchical scheme of computational approaches involving group-theoretical projection techniques beyond the mean field and exact configuration interaction, in parallel to experimental investigations, WMs are shown to provide an ideal platform for investigating the interplay between symmetry-preserving (stationary, referred to as rotating or sliding WMs) and broken-symmetry (superposition-necessitating, referred to as pinned or static WMs) solutions of the MBSE. In the process, a germane view of the phenomenon of symmetry breaking, based exclusively on finite systems and referred to as emergent symmetry breaking, is developed as a replacement to the formalistic spontaneous symmetry breaking that requires invocation of a singular thermodynamic limit. Attention is drawn to the counterintuitive fact that the very MBSE, which was inspired by de Broglie's undulatory matter waves and successfully explained the shell structure of delocalized electrons in atomic physics, is nevertheless capable of yielding contrasting solutions, which relate to corpuscular geometries of localized particles. This unforeseen behavior classifies the recent developments concerning WM and WC as an example of weak emergence, and thus of an arrow of reductionist explanation according to Weinberg's reasoning. Finally, this review, demonstrating the unexpected mathematical effectiveness beyond original expectations of the Schrödinger equation, is dedicated as a tribute to its 100 year anniversary.
The understanding of the behavior of systems of identical composite bosons has progressed significantly in connection with the analysis of the entanglement between constituents and the development of coboson theory. The basis of these treatments is a coboson ansatz for the ground state of a system of NNN pairs, stating that in appropriate limits this state is well approximated by the account of Pauli exclusion in what would otherwise be the product state of NNN independent pairs, each described by the single-pair ground state. In this work we study the validity of this ansatz for particularly simple problems, and show that short-range attractive interactions in very dilute limits and a single-pair ground state with very large entanglement are not enough to render the ansatz valid. On the contrary, we find that the dimensionality of the problem plays a crucial role in the behavior of the many-body ground state.
Molecules made of two fermionic atoms are ``cobosons''---a contraction for ``composite bosons.'' These molecules ``feel'' each other not only through interactions between atoms, but also through the Pauli exclusion between their fermionic components. In order to point out the importance of this Pauli exclusion in cold atom physics, we have calculated here the energy change of NNN identical cobosonic molecules when a similar molecule, made of atoms having possibly different spin states, is added. Due to the difference in the number of fermion exchanges with a molecule having zero, one, or two atoms identical to the ones already present in the system, we may think that this energy change can take three different values, even for spin-independent interatomic interactions. We actually find that the energy change, in the Born approximation, is exactly the same at all orders in density, when the added molecule has two or just one atom identical to the ones already there. In other words, the scattering length is predicted to be the same if the added molecule can have exchanges with one set of fermionic components or with two sets. This unexpected equality, which of course holds for spin-independent interactions only, results from a subtle balance in the fermion exchanges. To prove it, we make use of a recent extension of the composite-exciton many-body theory we have constructed, to any type of cobosons, the physical understanding of the various exchange processes being enlightened by the Shiva diagram representation (so named because of the multiarm structure reminiscent of the Hindu god Shiva) of this many-body theory.
We study, by means of exact-diagonalization techniques, the ground state of a few-fermion system with strong short-range repulsive interactions trapped by a harmonic potential in one spatial dimension. Even when the ground-state density profile displays, at strong coupling, very well pronounced Wigner oscillations with a 4kF4{k}_{\mathrm{F}}4kF​ periodicity, the pair-correlation function does not show any signature of Wigner-molecule-type correlations. For the sake of comparison, we present also numerical results for few-electron systems with Coulomb interactions, demonstrating that their ground state at strong coupling is, on the contrary, a Wigner molecule.
We show that an ansatz based on independent composite bosons [Phys. Rep. 463, 215 (2008)] accurately describes the condensate fraction of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates in ultracold Fermi gases. The entanglement between the fermionic constituents of a single Feshbach molecule then governs the many-particle statistics of the condensate, from the limit of strong interaction to close to unitarity. This result strengthens the role of entanglement as the indispensable driver of composite-boson behavior. The condensate fraction of fermion pairs at zero temperature that we compute matches excellently previous results obtained by means of fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo methods and the Bogoliubov depletion approximation. This paves the way towards the exploration of the BEC-BCS crossover physics in mixtures of cold Fermi gases with an arbitrary number of fermion pairs as well as the implementation of Hong-Ou-Mandel--like interference experiments proposed within coboson theory.