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arXiv:2503.15026 · AAPPS bulletin

Exact calculation of spectral properties of a particle interacting with a one-dimensional Fermi gas in optical lattices

Xia-Ji Liu, Hui Hu

Published Mar 31, 2025• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract By using the exact Bethe wavefunctions of the one-dimensional Hubbard model with N spin-up fermions and one spin-down impurity, we derive an analytic expression of the impurity form factor, in the form of a determinant of a $$(N+1)$$ ( N + 1 ) by $$(N+1)$$ ( N + 1 ) matrix. This analytic expression enables us to exactly calculate spectral properties of one-dimensional Fermi polarons in lattices, when the masses of the impurity particle and the Fermi bath are equal. We present the impurity spectral function as functions of the on-site interaction strength and the filling factor of the Fermi bath, and discuss the origin of Fermi singularities in the spectral function at small momentum and the emergence of polaron quasiparticles at large momentum near the boundary of Brillouin zone. Our analytic expression of the impurity form factors pave the way to exploring the intriguing dynamics of a particle interacting with a Fermi bath. Our exact predictions on the impurity spectral function could be directly examined in cold-atom laboratories by using the radio-frequency spectroscopy and Ramsey spectroscopy.

DOI
10.1007/s43673-025-00149-7

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Abstract By using the exact Bethe wavefunctions of the one-dimensional Hubbard model with N spin-up fermions and one spin-down impurity, we derive an analytic expression of the impurity form factor, in the form of a determinant of a (N+1)(N+1)(N+1) ( N + 1 ) by (N+1)(N+1)(N+1) ( N + 1 ) matrix. This analytic expression enables us to exactly calculate spectral properties of one-dimensional Fermi polarons in lattices, when the masses of the impurity particle and the Fermi bath are equal. We present the impurity spectral function as functions of the on-site interaction strength and the filling factor of the Fermi bath, and discuss the origin of Fermi singularities in the spectral function at small momentum and the emergence of polaron quasiparticles at large momentum near the boundary of Brillouin zone. Our analytic expression of the impurity form factors pave the way to exploring the intriguing dynamics of a particle interacting with a Fermi bath. Our exact predictions on the impurity spectral function could be directly examined in cold-atom laboratories by using the radio-frequency spectroscopy and Ramsey spectroscopy.
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.
We present a systematic study of a mobile impurity immersed in a three-dimensional Fermi sea of fermions at finite temperature, by using the standard non-self-consistent many-body TTT-matrix theory that is equivalent to a finite-temperature variational approach with the inclusion of one-particle-hole excitation. The impurity spectral function is determined in the real-frequency domain, avoiding any potential errors due to the numerical analytic continuation in previous TTT-matrix calculations and the small spectral broadening parameter used in variational calculations. In the weak-coupling limit, we find that the quasiparticle decay rate of both attractive and repulsive polarons does not increase significantly with increasing temperature, and therefore Fermi polarons may remain well defined far above Fermi degeneracy. In contrast, near the unitary limit with strong coupling, the decay rate of Fermi polarons rapidly increases and the quasiparticle picture breaks down close to the Fermi temperature. We analyze in detail the recent ejection and injection radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy measurements, performed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS), respectively. We show that the momentum average of the spectral function, which is necessary to account for the observed rf spectroscopy, has a sizable contribution to the width of the quasiparticle peak in spectroscopy. As a result, the measured decay rate of Fermi polarons could be significantly larger than the calculated quasiparticle decay rate at zero momentum. By taking this crucial contribution into account, we find that there is a reasonable agreement between theory and experiment for the lifetime of Fermi polarons in the strong-coupling regime, as long as they remain well defined.
Using the Bethe-ansatz analysis as reformulated by Edwards, we calculate the spectral properties of a particle interacting with a bath of fermions in one dimension for the case of equal particle-fermion masses. These are directly related to singularities apparent in optical experiments in one-dimensional systems. The orthogonality catastrophe for the case of an infinite particle mass survives in the limit of equal masses. We find that the exponent \ensuremath{\beta} of the quasiparticle weight Z\ensuremath{\simeq}${\mathit{N}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\beta}}}$ is different for the two cases and proportional to their respective phase shifts at the Fermi surface; we present a simple physical argument for this difference. We also show that these exponents describe the low-energy behavior of the spectral function for repulsive as well as attractive interactions.
We study the spectral function of interacting one-dimensional fermions for an integrable lattice model away from half-filling. The divergent power-law singularity of the spectral function near the single-particle or single-hole energy is described by an effective x-ray edge type model. At low densities and for momentum near the zone boundary, we find a second divergent singularity at higher energies which is associated with a two-particle bound state. We use the Bethe ansatz solution of the model to calculate the exact singularity exponents for any momentum and for arbitrary values of chemical potential and interaction strength in the critical regime. We relate the singularities of the spectral function to the long-time decay of the fermion Green's function and compare our predictions with numerical results from the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group (tDMRG). Our results show that the tDMRG method is able to provide accurate time decay exponents in the cases of power-law decay of the Green's function. Some implications for the line shape of the dynamical structure factor away from half-filling are also discussed. In addition, we show that 85% of the total spectral weight in the zero field Heisenberg model near wave-vector $q=\ensuremath{\pi}$ is given by the two-spinon contribution.
Immersing a mobile impurity into a many-body quantum system represents a theoretically intriguing and experimentally effective way of probing its properties. In this work, we study the polaron spectral function in various environments, within the framework of Fermi-Hubbard models. Inspired by possible realizations in cold atoms and semiconductor heterostructures, we consider different configurations for the background Fermi gas, including charge density waves, multiple Fermi seas and pair superfluids. While our calculations are performed using an exact-diagonalization approach, hence limiting our analysis to systems of few interacting Fermi particles, we identify robust spectral features supported by theoretical results. Our work provides a benchmark for computations based on mean-field approaches and reveal surprising features of polaron spectra, inspiring new theoretical investigations.
We theoretically investigate the behavior of a moving impurity immersed in a sea of fermionic atoms that are confined in a quasiperiodic (bichromatic) optical lattice within a standard variational approach. We consider both repulsive and attractive contact interactions for such a simple many-body localization problem of Fermi polarons. The variational approach enables us to access relatively large systems and therefore may be used to understand many-body localization in the thermodynamic limit. The energy and wave function of the polaron states are found to be strongly affected by the quasirandom lattice potential and their experimental measurements (i.e., via radio-frequency spectroscopy or quantum gas microscope) therefore provide a sensitive way to underpin the localization transition. We determine a phase diagram by calculating two critical quasirandom disorder strengths, which correspond to the onset of the localization of the ground-state polaron state and the many-body localization of all polaron states, respectively. Our predicted phase diagram could be straightforwardly examined in current cold-atom experiments.