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arXiv:2510.19533 · Physical Review A

Quantum Monte Carlo study of low-dimensional Fermi fluids of dipolar atoms

Clio Johnson, N. D. Drummond, J. P. Hague, C. MacCormick

Published Dec 3, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Fermionic cold atoms in optical traps provide viable quantum simulators of correlation effects in electronic systems. For dressed Rydberg atoms in two-dimensional traps with out-of-plane dipole moments, a realistic model of the pairwise interaction is of repulsive dipolar 1 / r 3 form at long range, softened to a constant at short range. This study provides parametrizations of fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo energy data for ferromagnetic (one-component) and paramagnetic (two-component) two-dimensional homogeneous Fermi fluids of interacting dipolar atoms. We find itinerant ferromagnetism to be unstable within our parameter spaces for dipolar interactions both with and without softening. Our parametrization of the energy as a function of density will enable density functional theory to support experimental studies of inhomogeneous fermionic cold-atom systems.

DOI
10.1103/gx6b-t48r

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Fermionic cold atoms in optical traps provide viable quantum simulators of correlation effects in electronic systems. For dressed Rydberg atoms in two-dimensional traps with out-of-plane dipole moments, a realistic model of the pairwise interaction is of repulsive dipolar 1 / r 3 form at long range, softened to a constant at short range. This study provides parametrizations of fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo energy data for ferromagnetic (one-component) and paramagnetic (two-component) two-dimensional homogeneous Fermi fluids of interacting dipolar atoms. We find itinerant ferromagnetism to be unstable within our parameter spaces for dipolar interactions both with and without softening. Our parametrization of the energy as a function of density will enable density functional theory to support experimental studies of inhomogeneous fermionic cold-atom systems.
We study a two-component mixture of fermionic dipoles in two dimensions at zero temperature, interacting via a purely repulsive 1/r31/{r}^{3}1/r3 potential. This model can be realized with ultracold atoms or molecules when their dipole moments are aligned in the confinement direction orthogonal to the plane. We characterize the unpolarized mixture by means of the diffusion Monte Carlo technique. Computing the equation of state, we identify the regime of validity for a mean-field theory based on a low-density expansion and compare our results with the hard-disk model of repulsive fermions. At high density, we address the possibility of itinerant ferromagnetism, namely, whether the ground state can be fully polarized in the fluid phase. Within the fixed-node approximation, we show that the accuracy of Jastrow-Slater trial wave functions, even with the typical two-body backflow correction, is not sufficient to resolve the relevant energy differences. By making use of the iterative-backflow improved trial wave functions, we observe no signature of a fully polarized ground state up to the freezing density.
Motivated by potential realizations in cold-atom or cold-molecule systems, we have performed quantum Monte Carlo simulations of two-component gases of fermions in two dimensions with hard-core interactions. We have determined the gross features of the zero-temperature phase diagram by investigating the relative stabilities of paramagnetic and ferromagnetic fluids and crystals. We have also examined the effect of including a pairwise, long-range ${r}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ potential between the particles. Our most important conclusion is that there is no region of stability for a ferromagnetic fluid phase, even if the long-range interaction is present. We also present results for the pair-correlation function, static structure factor, and momentum density of two-dimensional hard-core fluids.
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.
The ground-state properties of two-component repulsive Fermi gases in two dimensions are investigated by means of fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo simulations. The energy per particle is determined as a function of the intercomponent interaction strength and of the population imbalance. The regime of universality in terms of the sss-wave scattering length is identified by comparing results for hard-disk and for soft-disk potentials. In the large imbalance regime, the equation of state turns out to be well described by a Landau-Pomeranchuk functional for two-dimensional polarons. To fully characterize this expansion, we determine the polarons' effective mass and their coupling parameter, complementing previous studies on their chemical potential. Furthermore, we extract the magnetic susceptibility from low-imbalance data, finding only small deviations from the mean-field prediction. While the mean-field theory predicts a direct transition from a paramagnetic to a fully ferromagnetic phase, our diffusion Monte Carlo results suggest that the partially ferromagnetic phase is stable in a narrow interval of the interaction parameter. This finding calls for further analyses on the effects due to the fixed-node constraint.
Using continuous-space quantum Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the zero-temperature ferromagnetic behavior of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas under the influence of periodic potentials that describe the effect of a simple-cubic optical lattice. Simulations are performed with balanced and with imbalanced components, including the case of a single impurity immersed in a polarized Fermi sea (repulsive polaron). For an intermediate density below half filling, we locate the transitions between the paramagnetic, and the partially and fully ferromagnetic phases. As the intensity of the optical lattice increases, the ferromagnetic instability takes place at weaker interactions, indicating a possible route to observe ferromagnetism in experiments performed with ultracold atoms. We compare our findings with previous predictions based on the standard computational method used in material science, namely density functional theory, and with results based on tight-binding models.
We investigate the phase diagram of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas at T=0 by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Both purely repulsive and resonant attractive model potentials are considered in order to analyze the limits of the universal regime where the details of interatomic forces can be neglected. The equation of state of both balanced and unbalanced systems is calculated as a function of the interaction strength and the critical density for the onset of ferromagnetism is determined. The energy of the strongly polarized gas is calculated and parametrized in terms of the physical properties of repulsive polarons, which are relevant for the stability of the fully ferromagnetic state. Finally, we analyze the phase diagram in the interaction-polarization plane under the assumption that only phases with homogeneous magnetization can be produced.