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arXiv:2202.04995 · Physical Review A

Photoexcitation measurement of Tan's contact for a strongly interacting Fermi gas

Jia Wang, Xia-Ji Liu, Hui Hu

Published Dec 13, 2021• 6 citations
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Abstract

We derive theoretically an exact relation between Tan's universal contact and the photoexcitation rate of a strongly interacting Fermi gas, in the case of optically transferring fermionic pairs to a more tightly bound molecular state. Our deviation generalizes the relation between Tan's contact and the closed-channel molecular fraction found earlier by Werner, Tarruell, and Castin [Eur. Phys. J. B 68, 401 (2009)]. We use the relation to understand the recent low-temperature photoexcitation measurement in a strongly interacting $^{6}\mathrm{Li}$ Fermi gas [Liu et al., arXiv:1903.12321] and show that there is a reasonable agreement between theory and experiment close to the unitary limit. We propose that our relation can be applied to accurately measure Tan's contact coefficient at finite temperature in future experiments.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.104.063309

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We derive theoretically an exact relation between Tan's universal contact and the photoexcitation rate of a strongly interacting Fermi gas, in the case of optically transferring fermionic pairs to a more tightly bound molecular state. Our deviation generalizes the relation between Tan's contact and the closed-channel molecular fraction found earlier by Werner, Tarruell, and Castin [Eur. Phys. J. B 68, 401 (2009)]. We use the relation to understand the recent low-temperature photoexcitation measurement in a strongly interacting 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li Fermi gas [Liu et al., arXiv:1903.12321] and show that there is a reasonable agreement between theory and experiment close to the unitary limit. We propose that our relation can be applied to accurately measure Tan's contact coefficient at finite temperature in future experiments.
We study two-body correlations in a spin-balanced ultracold harmonically trapped Fermi gas of ^{6}Li atoms in the crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to the Bose-Einstein-Condensate (BEC) regime. For this, we precisely measure Tan's contact using a novel method based on photoexcitation of atomic pairs, which was recently proposed by Wang et al. [Photoexcitation measurement of Tan's contact for a strongly interacting Fermi gas, Phys. Rev. A 104, 063309 (2021).PLRAAN2469-992610.1103/PhysRevA.104.063309]. We map out the contact in the entire phase diagram of the BCS-BEC crossover for various temperatures and interaction strengths, probing regions in phase space that have not been investigated yet. Our measurements reach an uncertainty of ≈2% at the lowest temperatures and thus represent a precise quantitative benchmark. By comparison to our data, we localize the regions in phase space where theoretical predictions and interpolations give valid results. In regions where the contact is already well known we find excellent agreement with our measurements. Thus, our results demonstrate that photoinduced loss is a precise probe to measure quantum correlations in a strongly interacting Fermi gas.
Many-body fermion systems are important in many branches of physics, including condensed matter, nuclear, and now cold atom physics. In many cases, the interactions between fermions can be approximated by a contact interaction. A recent theoretical advance in the study of these systems is the derivation of a number of exact universal relations that are predicted to be valid for all interaction strengths, temperatures, and spin compositions. These equations, referred to as the Tan relations, relate a microscopic quantity, namely, the amplitude of the high-momentum tail of the fermion momentum distribution, to the thermodynamics of the many-body system. In this work, we provide experimental verification of the Tan relations in a strongly interacting gas of fermionic atoms by measuring both the microscopic and macroscopic quantities in the same system.
We present a comprehensive experimental study of Tan's universal contact parameter in a two-component ultracold Fermi gas, using Bragg spectroscopy. The contact uniquely parameterizes a number of universal properties of Fermi gases in the strongly interacting regime. It is linked to the spin-antiparallel component of the static structure factor S ↑↓ ( k ) at high momenta, which can readily be obtained via Bragg scattering. Contact depends upon the relative interaction strength 1/( k F a ) and temperature T / T F , where k F is the Fermi wave vector, a is the s-wave scattering length and T F is the Fermi temperature. We present measurements of both of these dependencies in a cloud of 6 Li atoms and compare our findings to theoretical predictions. We also compare Bragg spectroscopic methods based on measuring the energy and momentum transferred to the cloud and examine the conditions under which the energy transfer method provides improved accuracy. Our measurements of the dynamic structure factor and contact are found to be in good agreement with theoretical predictions based on the quantum virial expansion.
This paper presents studies of the universal properties of strongly interacting Fermi gases using Bragg spectroscopy. We focus on pair-correlations, their relationship to the contact C introduced by Tan, and their dependence on both the momentum and temperature. We show that short-range pair correlations obey a universal law, first derived by Tan through measurements of the static structure factor, which displays a universal scaling with the ratio of the contact to the momentum C/q . Bragg spectroscopy of ultracold 6 Li atoms is employed to measure the structure factor for a wide range of momenta and interaction strengths, providing broad confirmation of this universal law. We show that calibrating our Bragg spectra using the f -sum rule leads to a dramatic improvement in the accuracy of the structure factor measurement. We also measure the temperature dependence of the contact in a unitary gas and compare our results to calculations based on a virial expansion.
We theoretically investigate the static structure factor of an interacting Fermi gas near the BEC-BCS crossover at large momenta. Due to short-range two-body interactions, we show that the structure factor of unlike spin correlations S ↑↓ ( q ) falls off as 1/ q in a universal scaling region with large momentum ℏ q and large scattering length. The scaling coefficient is determined by the celebrated Tan's contact parameter, which links the short-range behavior of many-body systems to their universal thermodynamic properties. By implementing this structure-factor Tan relation together with the random-phase approximation and the virial expansion theory in various limiting cases, we show how to calculate S ↑↓ ( q ) at zero and finite temperatures for arbitrary interaction strengths, at momentum transfer higher than the Fermi momentum. Our results provide a way to experimentally confirm one of the Tan relations and to accurately measure the value of contact parameter.
The recently discovered universal thermodynamic behavior of dilute, strongly interacting Fermi gases also implies a universal structure in the many-body pair-correlation function at short distances, as quantified by the contact . Here, we theoretically calculate the temperature dependence of this universal contact for a Fermi gas in free space and in a harmonic trap. At high temperatures above the Fermi degeneracy temperature, T ≳ T F , we obtain a reliable non-perturbative quantum virial expansion up to third order. At low temperatures, we compare different approximate strong-coupling theories. These make different predictions, which need to be tested either by future experiments or by advanced quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We conjecture that in the universal unitarity limit, the contact or correlation decreases monotonically with increasing temperature, unless the temperature is significantly lower than the critical temperature, T ≪ T c ∼0.2 T F . We also discuss briefly how to measure the universal contact in either homogeneous or harmonically trapped Fermi gases.