We investigate the system of a heavy impurity immersed in a degenerate Fermi gas, where the impurity's internal degree of freedom (pseudospin) is manipulated by a series of radio-frequency (RF) pulses at several different times. Applying the functional determinant approach, we carry out an essentially exact calculation of the Ramsey-interference-type responses to the RF pulses. These responses can be regarded as multidimensional (MD) spectroscopy of the system in the time domain. Similar to their one-dimensional counterpart studied by Knap et al. [M. Knap et al., Phys. Rev. X 2, 041020 (2012)], these responses are universal functions. A Fourier transformation of the time intervals gives the MD spectroscopy in the frequency domain, providing insightful information on the many-body correlation and relaxation via the cross peaks, e.g., the off-diagonal peaks in a two-dimensional spectrum. These features are inaccessible for the conventional, one-dimensional absorption spectrum. Our scheme provides a different method to investigate many-body nonequilibrium physics beyond the linear response regime with accessible tools in cold atoms.
We investigate the system of a heavy impurity immersed in a degenerate Fermi gas, where the impurity's internal degree of freedom (pseudospin) is manipulated by a series of radio-frequency (RF) pulses at several different times. Applying the functional determinant approach, we carry out an essentially exact calculation of the Ramsey-interference-type responses to the RF pulses. These responses can be regarded as multidimensional (MD) spectroscopy of the system in the time domain. Similar to their one-dimensional counterpart studied by Knap et al. [M. Knap et al., Phys. Rev. X 2, 041020 (2012)], these responses are universal functions. A Fourier transformation of the time intervals gives the MD spectroscopy in the frequency domain, providing insightful information on the many-body correlation and relaxation via the cross peaks, e.g., the off-diagonal peaks in a two-dimensional spectrum. These features are inaccessible for the conventional, one-dimensional absorption spectrum. Our scheme provides a different method to investigate many-body nonequilibrium physics beyond the linear response regime with accessible tools in cold atoms.
Abstract In this brief review, we report some new development in the functional determinant approach (FDA), an exact numerical method, in the studies of a heavy quantum impurity immersed in Fermi gases and manipulated with radio-frequency pulses. FDA has been successfully applied to investigate the universal dynamical responses of a heavy impurity in an ultracold ideal Fermi gas in both the time and frequency domain, which allows the exploration of the renowned Anderson’s orthogonality catastrophe (OC). In such a system, OC is induced by the multiple particle-hole excitations of the Fermi sea, which is beyond a simple perturbation picture and manifests itself as the absence of quasiparticles named polarons. More recently, two new directions for studying heavy impurity with FDA have been developed. One is to extend FDA to a strongly correlated background superfluid background, a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid. In this system, Anderson’s orthogonality catastrophe is prohibited due to the suppression of multiple particle-hole excitations by the superfluid gap, which leads to the existence of genuine polaron. The other direction is to generalize the FDA to the case of multiple RF pulses scheme, which extends the well-established 1D Ramsey spectroscopy in ultracold atoms into multidimensional, in the same spirit as the well-known multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and optical multidimensional coherent spectroscopy. Multidimensional Ramsey spectroscopy allows us to investigate correlations between spectral peaks of an impurity-medium system that is not accessible in the conventional one-dimensional spectrum.
In this report we discuss the dynamical response of heavy quantum impurities immersed in a Fermi gas at zero and at finite temperature. Studying both the frequency and the time domain allows one to identify interaction regimes that are characterized by distinct many-body dynamics. From this theoretical study a picture emerges in which impurity dynamics is universal on essentially all time scales, and where the high-frequency few-body response is related to the long-time dynamics of the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe by Tan relations. Our theoretical description relies on different and complementary approaches: functional determinants give an exact numerical solution for time- and frequency-resolved responses, bosonization provides accurate analytical expressions at low temperatures, and the theory of Toeplitz determinants allows one to analytically predict response up to high temperatures. Using these approaches we predict the thermal decoherence rate of the fermionic system and prove that within the considered model the fastest rate of long-time decoherence is given by [Formula: see text]. We show that Feshbach resonances in cold atomic systems give access to new interaction regimes where quantum effects can prevail even in the thermal regime of many-body dynamics. The key signature of this phenomenon is a crossover between different exponential decay rates of the real-time Ramsey signal. It is shown that the physics of the orthogonality catastrophe is experimentally observable up to temperatures [Formula: see text] where it leaves its fingerprint in a power-law temperature dependence of thermal spectral weight and we review how this phenomenon is related to the physics of heavy ions in liquid [Formula: see text]He and the formation of Fermi polarons. The presented results are in excellent agreement with recent experiments on LiK mixtures, and we predict several new phenomena that can be tested using currently available experimental technology.
Multidimensional spectroscopy is becoming an increasingly popular tool and there is an ongoing effort to access electronic transitions and many-body dynamics in correlated materials. We apply the protocol recently proposed by Wang [Phys. Rev. A 107, 013305 (2023)] to extract two-dimensional polaron spectra in a Fermi superfluid with an impurity. The bath is described by a BCS ansatz and it assumed that the impurity can scatter at most one quasiparticle pair. The spectral response contains a symmetric contribution, which carries the same information as Ramsey spectra, and an asymmetric one. While a priori it may seem promising to probe the quasiparticle gap from the asymmetric contribution, we show explicitly that this is not the case and, in the absence of incoherent processes, multidimensional spectroscopy does not bring much additional information. Our calculation is suitable for ultracold gases, but we discuss implications for exciton polarons in two-dimensional materials.
We present a theory of radio-frequency spectroscopy of impurities interacting with a quantum gas at finite temperature. By working in the canonical ensemble of a single impurity, we show that the impurity spectral response is directly connected to the finite-temperature equation of state (free energy) of the impurity. We consider two different response protocols: injection, where the impurity is introduced into the medium from an initially noninteracting state, and ejection, where the impurity is ejected from an initially interacting state with the medium. We show that there is a simple mapping between injection and ejection spectra, which is connected to the detailed balance condition in thermal equilibrium. To illustrate the power of our approach, we specialize to the case of the Fermi polaron, corresponding to an impurity atom that is immersed in a noninteracting Fermi gas. For a mobile impurity with a mass equal to the fermion mass, we employ a finite-temperature variational approach to obtain the impurity spectral response. We find a striking nonmonotonic dependence on temperature in the impurity free energy, the contact, and the radio-frequency spectra. For the case of an infinitely heavy Fermi polaron, we derive exact results for the finite-temperature free energy, thus generalizing Fumi's theorem to arbitrary temperature. We also determine the exact dynamics of the contact after a quench of the impurity-fermion interactions. Finally, we show that the injection and ejection spectra obtained from the variational approach compare well with the exact spectra, thus demonstrating the accuracy of our approximation method.
This thesis presents experiments investigating the
phase diagram of ultracold atomic Fermi gases using radio-frequency
spectroscopy. The tunability of many experimental parameters
including the temperature, the interparticle interaction strength
and the relative population of different Fermions allows to access
very different physical regimes. Radio-frequency spectroscopy has
been developed into an ideal tool to probe correlations between
particles in these different phases. In particular, radio-frequency
spectroscopy of highly population imbalanced atomic Fermi systems
gives access to the impurity problem: A single Fermion, or Boson,
immersed in a sea of Fermions constitutes a polaron, which can be
described by Landau's Fermi liquid theory. A critical interaction
strength can be identified separating the regime of a fermionic
polaron and a bosonic polaron. Radio-frequency spectroscopy of the
polarized superfluid phase allows an accurate measure of the
superfluid gap [Delta] and allows to identify the importance of
Hartree Mean-field energies. Furthermore, it is shown how these
different physical regimes are connected.
Multidimensional spectroscopy has become an established tool for disentangling microscopic processes that remain unresolved in conventional linear spectroscopy. Its extension to the terahertz regime now enables analogous questions to be addressed for low-energy collective excitations in quantum materials and synthetic many-body systems. Unlike isolated few-level systems, however, these collective modes generally cannot be described within the standard framework of nonlinear spectroscopy based on a few-level description. Their response is instead governed by their extended nature, interplay of interactions, fluctuations, disorder, dissipation, and coupling to additional degrees of freedom. This thesis develops a theoretical framework for computing and interpreting multidimensional nonlinear spectroscopy in quantum many-body systems. Using real-time nonequilibrium field theory, we formulate nonlinear susceptibilities diagrammatically in terms of propagators, interaction vertices, and self-energies, with particular emphasis on the third-order susceptibility relevant to infrared-active collective excitations. This approach places the established concepts and capabilities of multidimensional spectroscopy within a systematic many-body field-theoretical framework. Furthermore, this formulation makes it possible to move beyond the established probing capabilities, extending multidimensional spectroscopy beyond few-level descriptions and revealing new signatures and functionalities specific to interacting many-body systems. At the same time, it provides a controlled framework for constructing approximations that preserve the underlying symmetries and conservation laws of the system while remaining amenable to both analytical and numerical calculations. By incorporating quantum and thermal fluctuations within the random-phase approximation, we demonstrate that two-dimensional spectra can reveal the growth of fluctuations, identify field-theoretical bound states, and characterize their coupling to many-body continua. We further develop a diagrammatic description of rephasing in extended bosonic systems in the presence of static disorder. We identify the disorder vertex corrections responsible for echo formation and show how echo spectroscopy separates disorder-induced broadening from intrinsic relaxation. This framework is extended to coupled modes and strongly interacting regimes, where interactions can either enhance or suppress rephasing. A further result is the identification of a nonrephasing four-wave-mixing signal that is critically enhanced near a phase transition, in contrast to simpler nonlinear protocols like third-harmonic generation. We apply this framework to electromagnons in NiI2, Josephson plasmons in La2−xSrxCuO4, and the low-energy collective excitations in coupled one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates. Across these systems, we show how multidimensional spectroscopy can disentangle disorder from intrinsic relaxation, reveal the effects of interactions and fluctuations, identify coupling between collective modes and continua, and extract microscopic information that remains obscured in conventional spectroscopy. Taken together, the results of this thesis provide a diagrammatic framework for calculating and interpreting multidimensional nonlinear spectroscopic signals in many-body systems, while establishing this technique as a selective probe of collective dynamics across a broad range of quantum materials and synthetic platforms.