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arXiv:2204.01606 · SciPost Physics

Magnetic impurity in a one-dimensional few-fermion system

Lukas Rammelmüller, David Huber, Matija Čufar, Joachim Brand, H.‐W. Hammer, Artem G. Volosniev

Published Jan 24, 2023• 21 citations
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Abstract

We present a numerical analysis of spin-1/2 fermions in a one-dimensional harmonic potential in the presence of a magnetic point-like impurity at the center of the trap. The model represents a few-body analogue of a magnetic impurity in the vicinity of an s-wave superconductor. Already for a few particles we find a ground-state level crossing between sectors with different fermion parities. We interpret this crossing as a few-body precursor of a quantum phase transition, which occurs when the impurity “breaks” a Cooper pair. This picture is further corroborated by analyzing density-density correlations in momentum space. Finally, we discuss how the system may be realized with existing cold-atoms platforms.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.14.1.006

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We present a numerical analysis of spin-1/2 fermions in a one-dimensional harmonic potential in the presence of a magnetic point-like impurity at the center of the trap. The model represents a few-body analogue of a magnetic impurity in the vicinity of an s-wave superconductor. Already for a few particles we find a ground-state level crossing between sectors with different fermion parities. We interpret this crossing as a few-body precursor of a quantum phase transition, which occurs when the impurity “breaks” a Cooper pair. This picture is further corroborated by analyzing density-density correlations in momentum space. Finally, we discuss how the system may be realized with existing cold-atoms platforms.
We investigate a one-dimensional three-component few-fermion mixture confined in a parabolic external trap, where one component contains a single particle acting as an impurity. Focusing on the many-body ground state, we analyze how the interactions between the impurity and the other components influence the system's structure. For fixed interaction strengths within the mixture, we identify a critical interaction strength with the impurity for which the system undergoes a structural transition characterized by a substantial change in its spatial features. We explore this transition from the point of view of correlations and ground-state susceptibility. We remarkably find that this transition exhibits unique universality features not previously observed in other systems, highlighting novel many-body properties existing in multi-component fermionic mixtures.
The nature of strongly interacting Fermi gases and magnetism is one of the most important and studied topics in condensed-matter physics. Still, there are many open questions. A central issue is under what circumstances strong short-range repulsive interactions are enough to drive magnetic correlations. Recent progress in the field of cold atomic gases allows one to address this question in very clean systems where both particle numbers, interactions and dimensionality can be tuned. Here we study fermionic few-body systems in a one dimensional harmonic trap using a new rapidly converging effective-interaction technique, plus a novel analytical approach. This allows us to calculate the properties of a single spin-down atom interacting with a number of spin-up particles, a case of much recent experimental interest. Our findings indicate that, in the strongly interacting limit, spin-up and spin-down particles want to separate in the trap, which we interpret as a microscopic precursor of one-dimensional ferromagnetism in imbalanced systems. Our predictions are directly addressable in current experiments on ultracold atomic few-body systems.
The nature of strongly interacting Fermi gases and magnetism is one of the most important and studied topics in condensed-matter physics. Still, there are many open questions. A central issue is under what circumstances strong short-range repulsive interactions are enough to drive magnetic correlations. Recent progress in the field of cold atomic gases allows one to address this question in very clean systems where both particle numbers, interactions and dimensionality can be tuned. Here we study fermionic few-body systems in a one dimensional harmonic trap using a new rapidly converging effective-interaction technique, plus a novel analytical approach. This allows us to calculate the properties of a single spin-down atom interacting with a number of spin-up particles, a case of much recent experimental interest. Our findings indicate that, in the strongly interacting limit, spin-up and spin-down particles want to separate in the trap, which we interpret as a microscopic precursor of one-dimensional ferromagnetism in imbalanced systems. Our predictions are directly addressable in current experiments on ultracold atomic few-body systems.
We study a strongly attractive system of a few spin-(1/2) fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, interacting via two-body contact potential. Performing exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian we analyze the ground state and the thermal state of the system in terms of one- and two-particle reduced density matrices. We show how for strong attraction the correlated pairs emerge in the system. We find that the fraction of correlated pairs depends on temperature and we show that this dependence has universal properties analogous to the gap function known from the theory of superconductivity. In contrast to the standard approach based on the variational ansatz and/or perturbation theory, our predictions are exact and are valid also in a strong-attraction limit. Our findings contribute to the understanding of strongly correlated few-body systems and can be verified in current experiments on ultra-cold atoms.
We explore a few-fermion mixture consisting of two components that are repulsively interacting and confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. Different scenarios of population imbalance ranging from the completely imbalanced case where the physics of a single impurity in the Fermi sea is discussed to the partially imbalanced and equal population configurations are investigated. For the numerical calculations the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method is employed, extending its application to few-fermion systems. Apart from numerical calculations we generalize our ansatz for a correlated pair wave function proposed recently [I. Brouzos and P. Schmelcher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 045301 (2012)] for bosons to mixtures of fermions. From weak to strong coupling between the components the energies, the densities and the correlation properties of one-dimensional systems change vastly with an upper limit set by fermionization where for infinite repulsion all fermions can be mapped to identical ones. The numerical and analytical treatments are in good agreement with respect to the description of this crossover. We show that for equal populations each pair of different component atoms splits into two single peaks in the density while for partial imbalance additional peaks and plateaus arise for very strong interaction strengths. The case of a single-impurity atom shows rich behavior of the energy and density as we approach fermionization and is directly connected to recent experiments [G. Z\"urn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 075303 (2012)].
In the context of ultracold fermionic atoms with effective spin S confined to an elongated trap we study the one-dimensional gas interacting via an attractive δ-function potential using the Bethe ansatz solution. There are N = 2 S + 1 fundamental states: The particles can either be unpaired or clustered in bound states of 2, 3, ..., 2 S and 2S + 1 atoms. In a magnetic field, the rich ground state phase diagram consists of these N states and various mixed phases in which combinations of the fundamental states coexist. The phase diagram simplifies considerably in zero-field, where only bound states of N atoms can exist. Due to the harmonic confinement and within the local density approximation, the density profile of bound states decreases along the tube from the center of the trap to its boundaries. In an array of tubes with weak Josephson tunneling superfluid order may arise. In zero-field the response functions determining the superfluid and density wave order are calculated using conformal field theory and the exact Bethe ansatz solution. The response function for superfluidity consists of a power law with distance, while the correlation function for density waves is a power law of distance times a sinusoidal factor oscillating with distance with a period given by two times the Fermi momentum. For S = 1/2 superfluidity is a possibility for all densities and density waves can be excluded. For S ≥ 3/2 superfluidity may occur at low densities but at high densities it gives way to density waves. We discuss the scenario of phase separation where for S ≥ 3/2 the system has superfluid long-range order toward the trap boundaries and density waves at its center.