We consider the Fermi polaron problem of an impurity hopping around a two-dimensional square lattice and interacting with a sea of fermions at given filling factor. When the interaction is attractive, we find standard Fermi polaron quasiparticles, categorized as attractive polarons and repulsive polarons. When the interaction becomes repulsive, interestingly, we observe an unconventional highly excited polaron quasiparticle, sharply peaked at the corner of the first Brillouin zone with momentum $\mathbf{k}=(\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\pi},\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\pi})$. This super Fermi polaron branch arises from the dressing of the impurity's motion with holes, instead of particles of fermions. We show that super Fermi polarons become increasingly well defined with increasing impurity-fermion repulsions and might be considered as a precursor of Nagaoka ferromagnetism, which would appear at sufficiently large repulsions and at large filling factors. We also investigate the temperature dependence of super Fermi polarons and find that they are thermally robust against the significant increase in temperature.
We consider the Fermi polaron problem of an impurity hopping around a two-dimensional square lattice and interacting with a sea of fermions at given filling factor. When the interaction is attractive, we find standard Fermi polaron quasiparticles, categorized as attractive polarons and repulsive polarons. When the interaction becomes repulsive, interestingly, we observe an unconventional highly excited polaron quasiparticle, sharply peaked at the corner of the first Brillouin zone with momentum k=(\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi\ensuremathπ,\ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi\ensuremathπ). This super Fermi polaron branch arises from the dressing of the impurity's motion with holes, instead of particles of fermions. We show that super Fermi polarons become increasingly well defined with increasing impurity-fermion repulsions and might be considered as a precursor of Nagaoka ferromagnetism, which would appear at sufficiently large repulsions and at large filling factors. We also investigate the temperature dependence of super Fermi polarons and find that they are thermally robust against the significant increase in temperature.
A two-dimensional (2D) spin-up ideal Fermi gas interacting attractively with a spin-down impurity in the continuum undergoes, at zero temperature, a first-order phase transition from a polaron to a dimeron state. Here, we study a similar system on a square lattice, by considering the attractive 2D Fermi-Hubbard model with a single spin-down and a finite filling fraction of spin-up fermions. We study polaron and dimeron quasiparticle properties via variational ansatz up to one particle-hole excitation. Moreover, we develop a determinant diagrammatic Monte Carlo algorithm for this problem based on expansion in bare on-site coupling U . This algorithm turns out to be sign-problem-free at any filling of spin-up fermions, allowing one to sample very high diagram order (larger than 200 in our study) and to do simulations for large U / t (we go up to U / t = − 20 with t the hopping strength). Both methods give qualitatively consistent results. With variational ansatz we go to even larger on-site attraction. At very low spin-up filling fraction, we observe the polaron-to-dimeron transition, in agreement with the continuum case. Upon increasing the filling fraction, however, the transition shifts to higher values of | U | / t and the transition disappears beyond a filling fraction of about 20 % . In this region, the polaron state always gives a lower energy and has a finite quasiparticle residue. Our findings are directly relevant to cold atom experiments with 2D optical lattices: A small and finite density of spin-down impurities in the ground state will form a superfluid at strong coupling at low spin-up filling fraction. Above some critical spin-up filling fraction, the system is expected to remain a normal Fermi liquid, even in the strong-coupling limit.
We consider a single spin-down impurity atom interacting via an attractive, short-range potential with a spin-up Fermi sea in two dimensions (2D). Similarly to 3D, we show how the impurity can form a metastable state (the "repulsive polaron") with energy greater than that of the non-interacting impurity. Moreover, we find that the repulsive polaron can acquire a finite momentum for sufficiently weak attractive interactions. Even though the energy of the repulsive polaron can become sizeable, we argue that saturated ferromagnetism is unfavorable in 2D because of the polaron's finite lifetime and small quasiparticle weight.
We calculate the exact spectral function of a single impurity repulsively interacting with a bath of fermions in one-dimensional lattices, by deriving the explicit expression of the form factor for both regular Bethe states and the irregular spin-flip state and η-pairing state, based on the exactly solvable one-dimensional Hubbard model. While at low impurity momentum Q∼0 the spectral function is dominated by two power-law Fermi singularities, at large momentum we observe that the two singularities develop into two-sided distributions and eventually become anomalous Fermi singularities at the boundary of the Brillouin zone (i.e., Q=±π), with the power-law tails extending toward low energy. Near the quarter filling of the Fermi bath, we also find two broad polaron peaks at large impurity momentum, collectively contributed by many excited many-body states with non-negligible form factors. Our exact results of those distinct features in one-dimensional Fermi polarons, which have no correspondences in two and three dimensions, could be readily probed in cold-atom laboratories by trapping highly imbalanced two-component fermionic atoms into one-dimensional optical lattices.
When mobile impurities are introduced and coupled to a Fermi sea, new quasiparticles known as Fermi polarons are formed.There are two interesting, yet drastically different regimes of the Fermi polaron problem: (i) the attractive polaron (AP) branch connected to pairing phenomena spanning the crossover from BCS superfluidity to the Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules and (ii) the repulsive branch (RP), which underlies the physics responsible for Stoner's itinerant ferromagnetism.Here, we study Fermi polarons in two-dimensional systems, where many questions and debates regarding their nature persist.The model system we investigate is a doped MoSe 2 monolayer.We find the observed AP-RP energy splitting and the quantum dynamics of attractive polarons agree with the predictions of polaron theory.As the doping density increases, the quantum dephasing of the attractive polarons remains constant, indicative of stable quasiparticles, while the repulsive polaron dephasing rate increases nearly quadratically.The dynamics of Fermi polarons are of critical importance for understanding the pairing and magnetic instabilities that lead to the formation of rich quantum phases found in a wide range of physical systems including nuclei, cold atomic gases, and solids.
The Fermi polaron, formed by an impurity interacting with a surrounding Fermi sea, exemplifies the canonical quasiparticle concept as a cornerstone in our description of quantum many-body systems across a wide range of energy scales. Experiments on atomic quantum gases have provided profound insights into the universal nature of the Fermi polaron. While most previous studies have focused on the case of zero impurity momentum, finite-momentum properties have remained largely uncharted. Here, we investigate the moving Fermi polaron by combining a novel Raman acceleration scheme with high-precision radio-frequency spectroscopy, exploring the quasiparticle dispersion relation over a wide range of momenta. We compare our measurements of energy shifts and spectral linewidths with a microscopic theory and reach quantitative agreement for all momenta. For low momenta, we find the energy of the moving polaron to be fully consistent with the Fermi liquid picture of a dressed particle with a constant effective mass. At high momenta, the polaron approaches the behavior of a weakly interacting bare particle, featuring small energy shifts and weak broadening. For intermediate momenta, broadening is generally larger and, most strikingly, the behavior differs for attractive and repulsive polarons. While the repulsive polaron exhibits a smooth connection between both regimes along with a monotonic change of the energy shift, the attractive case shows a peculiar non-monotonic behavior. With increasing momentum, the attractive polaron enters a regime where its energy deviates from the constant effective mass expression and broadening suddenly increases. By comparing this observation with theory, we show that this abrupt behavior coincides with the attractive polaron entering a molecule-hole continuum, where it is no longer the ground state. We interpret this as a motion-induced polaron-molecule transition.
Polaron quasiparticles are formed when a mobile impurity is coupled to the elementary excitations of a many-particle background. In the field of ultracold atoms, the study of the associated impurity problem has attracted a growing interest over the last fifteen years. Polaron quasiparticle properties are essential to our understanding of a variety of paradigmatic quantum many-body systems realized in ultracold atomic gases and in the solid state, from imbalanced Bose–Fermi and Fermi–Fermi mixtures to fermionic Hubbard models. In this topical review, we focus on the so-called repulsive polaron branch, which emerges as an excited many-body state in systems with underlying attractive interactions such as ultracold atomic mixtures, and is characterized by an effective repulsion between the impurity and the surrounding medium. We give a brief account of the current theoretical and experimental understanding of repulsive polaron properties, for impurities embedded in both fermionic and bosonic media, and we highlight open issues deserving future investigations.