We theoretically study the spin current between two polarized Fermi gases with repulsive interactions near the itinerant ferromagnetic phase transition. We consider a two-terminal model where the left reservoir is fixed to be fully polarized while the polarization of the right reservoir is tuned through a fictitious magnetic field defined by the chemical-potential difference between different atomic hyperfine states. We calculate the spectra of the spin-flip susceptibility function, which displays a magnon dispersion emerging from the Stoner continuum at low momentum in the ferromagnetic phase. Based on the spin-flip susceptibility and using Keldysh Green's function formalism, we investigate the spin current induced by quasiparticle and spin-flip tunneling processes, respectively, and show their dependence on the polarization bias between two reservoirs. The one-body (quasiparticle) tunneling demonstrates a linear dependence with respect to the polarization bias. In contrast, the spin-flip process manifests a predominantly cubic dependence on the bias. While indicating an enhanced magnon tunneling in the strong-coupling regime, our results also demonstrate a characteristic behavior around the critical repulsive strength for ferromagnetic phase transition at low temperatures.
The Stoner model predicts that a two-component Fermi gas at increasing repulsive interactions undergoes a ferromagnetic transition. Using the random-phase approximation we study the dynamical properties of the interacting Fermi gas. For an atomic Fermi gas under harmonic confinement we show that the transverse (spin-flip) dynamical susceptibility displays a clear signature of the ferromagnetic phase in a magnon peak emerging from the Stoner particle-hole continuum. The dynamical spin susceptibilities could be experimentally explored via spin-dependent Bragg spectroscopy.
Abstract This chapter discusses the magnetic properties of interacting Fermi gases. It considers the transition to the ferromagnetic phase (itinerant ferromagnetism) of a repulsive Fermi gas as a consequence of the Stoner instability. The dependence of the magnetic susceptibility on the relevant interaction coupling constant is explicitly discussed. The chapter then investigates the competition between superfluidity and ferromagnetism and the nature of the Clogston–Chandrasekhar transition, both in uniform and harmonically trapped Fermi gases, with special focus on the behaviour at unitarity, where systematic experimental data are available. It finally addresses the problem of the polaron in highly polarized configurations and the transition from the polaron to molecular binding along the BCS–BEC crossover.
It is generally believed that a dilute spin-
21 Fermi gas with repulsive interactions can undergo a ferromagnetic phase transition to a spin-polarized state at a critical gas parameter
(kFa)c. Previous theoretical predictions of the ferromagnetic phase transition have been based on the perturbation theory, which treats the gas parameter as a small number. On the other hand, Belitz, Kirkpatrick, and Vojta (BKV) have argued that the phase transition in clean itinerant ferromagnets is generically of first order at low temperatures, due to the correlation effects that lead to a nonanalytic term in the free energy. The second-order perturbation theory predicts a first-order phase transition at
(kFa)c=1.054, consistent with the BKV argument. However, since the critical gas parameter is expected to be of order
O(1), perturbative predictions may be unreliable. In this paper we study the nonperturbative effects on the ferromagnetic phase transition by summing the particle-particle ladder diagrams to all orders in the gas parameter. We consider a universal repulsive Fermi gas where the effective range effects can be neglected, which can be realized in a two-component Fermi gas of
6Li atoms by using a nonadiabatic field switch to the upper branch of a Feshbach resonance with a positive
s-wave scattering length. Our theory predicts a second-order phase transition, which indicates that ferromagnetic transition in dilute Fermi gases is possibly a counterexample to the BKV argument. The predicted critical gas parameter
(kFa)c=0.858 is in good agreement with the recent quantum Monte Carlo result
(kFa)c=0.86 for a nearly zero-range potential [S. Pilati et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 030405 (2010)]. We also compare the spin susceptibility with the quantum Monte Carlo result and find good agreement.
We predict the phase separations of two-dimensional Fermi gases with repulsive contact-type interactions between two spin components. Using density-potential functional theory with systematic semiclassical approximations, we address the long-standing problem of itinerant ferromagnetism in realistic settings. We reveal a universal transition from the paramagnetic state at small repulsive interactions toward ferromagnetic density profiles at large interaction strengths, with intricate particle-number dependent phases in between. Building on quantum Monte Carlo results for uniform systems, we benchmark our simulations against Hartree–Fock calculations for a small number of trapped fermions. We thereby demonstrate that our employed corrections to the bare contact interaction energy and especially to the Thomas–Fermi kinetic energy functional are necessary for reliably predicting properties of trapped mesoscopic Fermi gases. The density patterns of the ground state survive at low finite temperatures and confirm the Stoner-type polarization behavior across a universal interaction parameter, albeit with substantial quantitative differences that originate in the trapping potential and the quantum-corrected kinetic energy. We also uncover a plethora of metastable configurations that are energetically comparable to the ground-state density profiles and are thus likely to be observed in experiments. We argue that our density-functional approach can be easily applied to interacting multi-component Fermi gases in general.
In the 1930s, two main paradigms for the theoretical description of ferromagnetism were developed: Heisenberg ferromagnetism of localized fermions (e.g., in a lattice), and Bloch or Stoner ferromagnetism of nonlocalized fermions (i.e., in a gas), also called itinerant ferromagnetism. Despite many theoretical predictions, itinerant ferromagnetism has remained elusive in experiments. This ferromagnetic state is predicted to occur for strong repulsive interactions, corresponding to a regime that is very challenging to describe theoretically because there are multiple competing physical effects, including superfluid pairing. In this paper, we point out that the problem of itinerant ferromagnetism for atomic Fermi gases is different from that of electron gases in metals due to the short-range nature of the interatomic interactions. We also show that the standard saddle point used to describe itinerant ferromagnetism of the electron gas in metals does not apply, because in the short-range limit of this approximation the Pauli exclusion principle is violated. As a remedy, we introduce a modified interaction pseudopotential for ultracold gases which includes both local (Hartree) and nonlocal (Fock) terms while preserving the Pauli exclusion principle in the short-range regime. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of this method to study the existence and stability of itinerant ferromagnetism in ultracold atomic gases. Lastly, we obtain the critical temperature for the ferromagnetic transition as a function of the opposite-spin interaction strength and find a rather good agreement with recent experimental results.
While spin transport plays an important role in fundamental physics as well as spintronics applications, the spin-flip tunneling process associated with magnon transport remains elusive in ultracold Fermi gases. This study propose a method for detecting spin-flip tunneling via the Fano factor, which is defined as the noise-to-current ratio and is proportional to the effective charge of carriers. The authors show that the tunneling channel can be altered by tuning either the interaction strength or the potential barrier. This result could strongly impact the study of spin-transport phenomena, and our understanding of quantum transport in strongly interacting systems.