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arXiv:2311.05963 · Physical Review A

Phase separation of a repulsive two-component Fermi gas at the two- to three-dimensional crossover

Piotr T. Grochowski, Martin-Isbjörn Trappe, Tomasz Karpiuk, Kazimierz Rza̧żewski

Published Aug 27, 2024• 3 citations
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Abstract

We present a theoretical analysis of phase separations between two repulsively interacting components in an ultracold fermionic gas, occurring at the dimensional crossover in a harmonic trap with varying aspect ratios. A tailored kinetic energy functional is derived and combined with a density-potential functional approach to develop a framework that is benchmarked with the orbital-based method. We investigate the changes in the density profile of the phase-separated gas under different interaction strengths and geometries. The analysis reveals the existence of small, partially polarized domains in certain parameter regimes, which is similar to the purely two-dimensional limit. However, the density profile is further enriched by a shell structure found in anisotropic traps. We also track the transitions that can be driven by a change in either interaction strength or trap geometry. The developed framework is noted to have applications for other systems with repulsive interactions that combine continuous and discrete degrees of freedom.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.110.023325

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•Jun 23, 2020•0 citations
We present a theoretical analysis of phase separations between two repulsively interacting components in an ultracold fermionic gas, occurring at the dimensional crossover in a harmonic trap with varying aspect ratios. A tailored kinetic energy functional is derived and combined with a density-potential functional approach to develop a framework that is benchmarked with the orbital-based method. We investigate the changes in the density profile of the phase-separated gas under different interaction strengths and geometries. The analysis reveals the existence of small, partially polarized domains in certain parameter regimes, which is similar to the purely two-dimensional limit. However, the density profile is further enriched by a shell structure found in anisotropic traps. We also track the transitions that can be driven by a change in either interaction strength or trap geometry. The developed framework is noted to have applications for other systems with repulsive interactions that combine continuous and discrete degrees of freedom.
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.
We investigate separations of trapped balanced two-component atomic Fermi gases with repulsive contact interaction. Candidates for ground-state densities are obtained from the imaginary-time evolution of a nonlinear pseudo-Schr\"odinger equation in three dimensions, rather than from the cumbersome variational equations of the underlying energy density functional. With the employed hydrodynamical approach, gradient corrections to the Thomas-Fermi approximation are conveniently included and are shown to be vital for reliable density profiles. We provide critical repulsion strengths that mark the onset of phase transitions in a harmonic trap. We present transitions from identical density profiles of the two fermion species towards isotropic and anisotropic separations for various confinements, including harmonic and double-well-type traps. Our proposed method is suited for arbitrary trap geometries and can be straightforwardly extended to study dynamics in the light of ongoing experiments on degenerate Fermi gases.
We study ferromagnetism in a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas in a harmonic trap. Within a local density approximation, the two components phase separate beyond a critical interaction strength, with one species having a higher density at the trap center. We discuss several easily observable experimental signatures of this transition. The mean-field release energy, its separate kinetic and interaction contributions, as well as the potential energy all depend on the interaction strength and contain a sharp signature of this transition. In addition, the conversion rate of atoms to molecules, arising from three-body collisions, peaks at an interaction strength just beyond the ferromagnetic transition point. We then go beyond the local density approximation and derive an energy functional that includes a term that depends on the local magnetization gradient and acts as a ``surface tension.'' Using this energy functional, we numerically study the energetics of some candidate spin textures that may be stabilized in a harmonic trapping potential at zero net magnetization. We find that a hedgehog state has a lower energy than an ``in-out'' domain-wall state in an isotropic trap. Upon inclusion of trap anisotropy we find that the hedgehog magnetization profile gets distorted due to the surface tension term, this distortion being more apparent for small atom numbers. We estimate that the magnetic dipole interaction does not play a significant role in this system. We consider possible implications for experiments on trapped 6Li^{6}\text{L}\text{i}6Li and 40K^{40}\text{K}40K gases.
We study the two-component repulsive Fermi gas with imbalanced populations in one dimension. Starting from the Bethe ansatz solution we calculate analytically the phase diagram for the homogeneous system. We show that three phases appear: the balanced phase, the fully polarized phase, and the partially polarized phase. By means of the local density approximation and the equation of state for the homogeneous system we calculate the density profile for the harmonically confined case. We show that a two-shell structure appears: at the center of the cloud we find the partially polarized phase and at the edges the fully polarized one. The radii of the inner and outer shells are calculated for different values of the polarization and the coupling strength. We calculate the dependence of the magnetization on the polarization for different values of the coupling strength and we show that the susceptibility is always finite.
The properties of a balanced two-component Fermi gas in a one-dimensional harmonic trap are studied by means of the coupled-cluster method. For few fermions we recover the results of exact diagonalization, yet with this method we are able to study much larger systems. We compute the energy, the chemical potential, the pairing gap, and the density profile of the trapped clouds, smoothly mapping the crossover between the few-body and many-body limits. The energy is found to converge surprisingly rapidly to the many-body result for every value of the interaction strength. Many more particles are instead needed to give rise to the nonanalytic behavior of the pairing gap, and to smoothen the pronounced even-odd oscillations of the chemical potential induced by the shell structure of the trap.
In ultracold Fermi gases, the spatial dimension and the number of particles involved in interactions largely determine the behavior of the system. By exploiting harmonic trapping potentials and multiple hyperfine states, experiments wield a high degree of control over both of these parameters. In this work, we show that a nonrelativistic, one-dimensional, three-component Fermi system with three-body contact interactions exhibits a quantum anomaly, breaking the scale invariance that exists for this system classically. The exact solution of this three-body problem, wherein a bound trimer forms at arbitrarily small attractive couplings, features a correspondence to the two-dimensional, two-body Fermi system, through which we determine the first non-trivial virial coefficient. We further develop a numerical technique for solving the few-body problem for up to six particles and find that the effective interaction between two trimers is repulsive. To extend our analysis to the many-body problem, we apply the worm algorithm of quantum Monte Carlo and present results for various thermodynamic quantities. We find that for increasing attractive couplings, the system undergoes a Fermi-Fermi crossover from a set of three ideal Fermi gases to one weakly repulsive Fermi gas consisting of massive composite trimers. Finally, we adapt the three-body interaction to a two-dimensional lattice model, where we find strong evidence for a second-order phase transition with an associated reduction in a discrete global symmetry. While the exact experimental parameters we require have not yet been physically realized, our work provides a comprehensive first set of predictions for this model.