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arXiv:2111.11545 · Science

Spin-charge separation in a one-dimensional Fermi gas with tunable interactions

Ruwan Senaratne, Danyel Cavazos-Cavazos, Sheng Wang, Feng He, Ya-Ting Chang, Aashish Kafle, Han Pu, Xi-Wen Guan, Randall G. Hulet

Published Jun 16, 2022• 63 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Ultracold atoms confined to periodic potentials have proven to be a powerful tool for quantum simulation of complex many-body systems. We confine fermions to one dimension to realize the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid model, which describes the highly collective nature of their low-energy excitations. We use Bragg spectroscopy to directly excite either the spin or charge waves for various strengths of repulsive interaction. We observe that the velocity of the spin and charge excitations shift in opposite directions with increasing interaction, a hallmark of spin-charge separation. The excitation spectra are in quantitative agreement with the exact solution of the Yang-Gaudin model and the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory. Furthermore, we identify effects of nonlinear corrections to this theory that arise from band curvature and back-scattering.

DOI
10.1126/science.abn1719

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Abstract The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory describes the low-energy excitations of strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) fermions. In the past years, a number of studies have provided a detailed understanding of this universality class. More recently, theoretical investigations that go beyond the standard low-temperature, linear-response TLL regime have been developed. While these provide a basis for understanding the dynamics of the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid, there are few experimental investigations in this regime. Here we report the observation of a thermally induced, spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid in a 6Li atomic Fermi gas confined to 1D. We use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the suppression of spin-charge separation and the decay of correlations as the temperature is increased. Our results probe the crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes of the Luttinger liquid and elucidate the roles of the charge and the spin degrees of freedom in this regime.

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Ultracold atoms confined to periodic potentials have proven to be a powerful tool for quantum simulation of complex many-body systems. We confine fermions to one dimension to realize the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid model, which describes the highly collective nature of their low-energy excitations. We use Bragg spectroscopy to directly excite either the spin or charge waves for various strengths of repulsive interaction. We observe that the velocity of the spin and charge excitations shift in opposite directions with increasing interaction, a hallmark of spin-charge separation. The excitation spectra are in quantitative agreement with the exact solution of the Yang-Gaudin model and the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory. Furthermore, we identify effects of nonlinear corrections to this theory that arise from band curvature and back-scattering.
Interacting fermions that are confined to 1D can only support collective excitations and are thus governed by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, in which collective excitations decouple into charge and spin modes instead of particle-like excitations. Over the course of this work we have realized analog quantum simulations of the TLL model using a 6-Li atomic system. By taking advantage of a magnetic Feshbach resonance we readily tune the interactions of the sample so that we can transition from a non-interacting gas to either a strongly repulsive or a strongly attractive system, and probe the dynamics of the system within these regimes. By using low-momentum Bragg spectroscopy we were able to measure and characterize the spin-charge separation of a TLL. Our work also presents the first observation of spin and charge density waves that are separately excited from the ground state through a Bragg perturbation. The observed dynamical response function of the spin and charge excitations remarkably captures both the universal behavior of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid, as well as the non-linear effects related to the band curvature effect in the charge sector and the back-scattering interaction effect in the spin sector. Up to now considering higher-order corrections to the linear dispersion in either the spin or charge degrees of freedom had remained out of reach for both theory and experiment. In addition to this, we also realized a spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid and characterized its temperature crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes. On the attractive interactions regime we observe an inversion of spin-charge separation, and we also have seen preliminary signatures of confinement-induced 1D bound states.
At low temperature, collective excitations of one-dimensional (1D) interacting fermions exhibit spin-charge separation, a unique feature predicted by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, but a rigorous understanding remains challenging. Using the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz (TBA) formalism, we analytically derive universal properties of a 1D repulsive spin-1/2 Fermi gas with arbitrary interaction strength. We show how spin-charge separation emerges from the exact TBA formalism, and how it is disrupted by the interplay between the two degrees of freedom that brings us beyond the TLL paradigm. Based on the exact low-lying excitation spectra, we further evaluate the spin and charge dynamical structure factors (DSFs). The peaks of the DSFs exhibit distinguishable propagating velocities of spin and charge as functions of interaction strength, which can be observed by Bragg spectroscopy with ultracold atoms.
The one-dimensional (1D) Yang-Gaudin model--an integrable δδδ-function interacting Fermi gas, serves as a paradigm in quantum many-body physics, encompassing phenomena from spin-charge separation to the Luther-Emery liquid. However, a consistent description of the Luther-Emery liquid and the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-like pairing states in the 1D attractive Fermi gas remains elusive. In this work, we develop a universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory to describe the FFLO state both for the case of weak and strong binding between fermions of opposite spins. We rigorously derive a low-energy effective Hamiltonian using bosonization, revealing the emergence of a two-component TLL: one exhibiting spin-charge coupling in the weak binding regime, and another featuring charge-charge separation in the strong binding regime. For the weak binding regime, we further derive renormalization-group equations for the sine-Gordon term in the spin sector and show that this term undergoes a relevant-irrelevant phase transition driven by the magnetic field. We further analyze the dynamical correlation functions of the FFLO pairing state based on the effective Hamiltonian we constructed. Finally, we discuss experiments using ultracold atoms to elucidate the Luther-Emery liquid behavior and the subtle phenomena of spin-charge coupling and charge-charge separation.
The low-energy excitations of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas confined to one dimension are linear dispersing spin- and charge-density waves whose respective propagation velocities depend on the strength and sign of their interaction. Quasi-1D fermions with attractive interaction realize the Luther-Emery liquid, which exhibits a rich array of phenomena, many of which are qualitatively different from those exhibited by their repulsive counterpart. We use a Feshbach resonance to access attractive interactions with 6^66Li atoms. We measured the spin and charge dynamic structure factors using Bragg spectroscopy and find that, contrary to repulsive interactions, the spin wave propagates faster than the charge density wave, thus producing an inversion of the classic spin-charge separation. We also find that a small spin polarization strongly suppresses the spin gap in the measured Bragg spectra. Evidence for pairing are a reduction in spin correlations with increasing attraction and RF spectra consistent with an atom/molecule mixture.
Fermions in one dimension are vastly different from their higher-dimension counterparts. At the same time, many theoretical models in one dimension have the luxury of being integrable and exactly solvable, which makes them excellent test beds for quantum simulation. In using these test beds, we can understand and improve on the techniques of quantum simulation so that we move towards solving difficult problems that cannot be solved using other methods due to the sheer complexity of these systems. In this work, we prepare one-dimensional fermions using cold atom techniques and probe low-energy excitations in such systems. We do so using the technique of Bragg spectroscopy, which enables us to probe the dynamical structure factor of the system directly, which in turn tells us about the density-density and spin-density correlations in the system. Utilizing the extreme tunability of cold atom experiments, we can study different regimes of these 1D Fermi gases. In particular, moving on from our previous investigations in the repulsive interactions, we investigate the attractive interaction side, where the attraction of the fermions causes bound states to form. The binding energy of these bound states causes a gap in the spin excitation, a hallmark of a new class of model: Luther-Emery liquid. We investigate weakly attractive Fermi gases close to the Luther-Emery limit and observe an inversion of the spin-charge separation hierarchy compared to the repulsive side, confirming expectations from exact Bethe ansatz solutions for the homogeneous gas at zero temperature, in which weakly bound fermion pairs are predicted. The result presented here provides insight into physics in one dimension, an important realm that is well known to host many exciting physics and exotic phases.
Abstract The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory describes the low-energy excitations of strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) fermions. In the past years, a number of studies have provided a detailed understanding of this universality class. More recently, theoretical investigations that go beyond the standard low-temperature, linear-response TLL regime have been developed. While these provide a basis for understanding the dynamics of the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid, there are few experimental investigations in this regime. Here we report the observation of a thermally induced, spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid in a 6Li atomic Fermi gas confined to 1D. We use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the suppression of spin-charge separation and the decay of correlations as the temperature is increased. Our results probe the crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes of the Luttinger liquid and elucidate the roles of the charge and the spin degrees of freedom in this regime.