We propose to measure the dispersions of Fermi polaron and molecule by engineering spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the impurity, which induces spin flip with finite momentum transfer. The polaron dispersion can be probed at small SOC momentum from the linear response of impurity spin. For molecule, we show that it can be prepared through an adiabatic steady-state evolution when setting SOC momentum as the Fermi momentum of majority bath. By gradually reducing SOC strength to zero, the steady state smoothly evolves to a molecular state with directional symmetry breaking. The corresponding dispersion can then be probed experimentally through the pair momentum distribution of molecules at finite density. Our scheme reveals a fundamental momentum difference between Fermi polaron and molecule, thereby offering a clear physical picture for their first-order transition in single-impurity system.
We propose to measure the dispersions of Fermi polaron and molecule by engineering spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the impurity, which induces spin flip with finite momentum transfer. The polaron dispersion can be probed at small SOC momentum from the linear response of impurity spin. For molecule, we show that it can be prepared through an adiabatic steady-state evolution when setting SOC momentum as the Fermi momentum of majority bath. By gradually reducing SOC strength to zero, the steady state smoothly evolves to a molecular state with directional symmetry breaking. The corresponding dispersion can then be probed experimentally through the pair momentum distribution of molecules at finite density. Our scheme reveals a fundamental momentum difference between Fermi polaron and molecule, thereby offering a clear physical picture for their first-order transition in single-impurity system.
We investigate the polaron and molecular states of a fermionic atom with one-dimensional spin–orbit coupling (SOC) coupled to a three-dimensional spinless Fermi sea. Because of the interplay among the SOC, Raman coupling and spin-selected interatomic interactions, the polaron state induced by the spin–orbit coupled impurity exhibits quite unique features. We find that the energy dispersion of the polaron generally has a double-minimum structure, which results in a finite center-of-mass (c.m.) momentum in the ground state, different from the zero-momentum polarons where SOC are introduced into the majority atoms. By further tuning the parameters such as the atomic interaction strength, a discontinuous transition between the polarons with different c.m. momenta may occur, signaled by the singular behavior of the quasiparticle residue and effective mass of the polaron. Meanwhile, the molecular state as well as the polaron-to-molecule transition is also strongly affected by the Raman coupling and the effective Zeeman field, which are introduced by the lasers generating SOC on the impurity atom. We also discuss the effects of a more general spin-dependent interaction and mass ratio. These results would be beneficial for the study of impurity physics brought by SOC.
We study the polaron problem of an impurity immersed in a dissipative spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas via a non-self-consistent T -matrix method. We first propose an experimental scheme to realize a spin-orbit coupled Fermi bath with dissipation, and show that such a system can be described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian that contains an imaginary spin-flip term and an imaginary constant shift term. We find that the non-Hermiticity will change the single-particle dispersion of the bath gas, and modify the properties of attractive and repulsive polarons such as energy, quasi-particle residue, effective mass, and decay rate. We also investigate the Thouless criteria corresponding to the instability of the polaron-molecule transition, which suggests a molecule state is more facilitated with stronger bath dissipation. Finally, we consider the case with finite impurity density and calculate the interaction between polarons. Our result extends the study of polaron physics to non-Hermitian systems and may be realized in future experiments.
We revisit the polaron-molecule transition in three-dimensional (3D) fermion systems using the well-established variational approach. The molecule is found to be intrinsically unstable against lowest-order particle-hole excitations, and it can only approximate the ground state of impurity systems with a finite total momentum in the strong-coupling regime. The polaron-molecule transition can therefore be reinterpreted as a first-order transition between single impurity systems with different total momenta. Within a certain interaction window near their transition, both states appear as local minima in the dispersion curve, indicating they can coexist in a realistic system. We have further confirmed the polaron-molecule coexistence in the presence of a finite impurity concentration and at low temperature, which directly leads to a smooth polaron-molecule transition as observed in recent experiments of 3D ultracold Fermi gases. Our results have provided an unambiguous physical picture for the competition and conversion between a polaron and molecule, and also shed light on Fermi polaron properties in low dimensions.
We show that spin-orbit coupling (SOC) gives rise to pairing instability in a highly polarized two-dimensional Fermi gas for an arbitrary interaction strength. The pairing instability can lead to a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov-like molecular state, which undergoes a first-order transition into a pairing state with zero center-of-mass momentum as the parameters are tuned. These pairing states are metastable against a polaron state dressed by particle-hole fluctuations for small SOC. At large SOC, a polaron-molecule transition exists, which suggests a phase transition between the topological superfluid state and the normal state for a highly polarized Fermi gas in the thermodynamic limit. As polarization in a Fermi gas with SOC is induced by the effective Zeeman field, we also discuss the influences of the effective Zeeman field on the ground state of the system. Our findings may be tested directly in future experiments.
Understanding the behavior of an impurity strongly interacting with a Fermi sea is a long-standing challenge in many-body physics. When the interactions are short-ranged, two vastly different ground states exist: a polaron quasiparticle and a molecule dressed by the majority atoms. In the single-impurity limit, it is predicted that at a critical interaction strength, a first-order transition occurs between these two states. Experiments, however, are always conducted in the finite temperature and impurity density regime. The fate of the polaron-to-molecule transition under these conditions, where the statistics of quantum impurities and thermal effects become relevant, is still unknown. Here, we address this question experimentally and theoretically. Our experiments are performed with a spin-imbalanced ultracold Fermi gas with tunable interactions. Utilizing a novel Raman spectroscopy combined with a high-sensitivity fluorescence detection technique, we isolate the quasiparticle contribution and extract the polaron energy, spectral weight, and the contact parameter. As the interaction strength is increased, we observe a continuous variation of all observables, in particular a smooth reduction of the quasiparticle weight as it goes to zero beyond the transition point. Our observation is in good agreement with a theoretical model where polaron and molecule quasiparticle states are thermally occupied according to their quantum statistics. At the experimental conditions, polaron states are hence populated even at interactions where the molecule is the ground state and vice versa. The emerging physical picture is thus that of a smooth transition between polarons and molecules and a coexistence of both in the region around the expected transition.
We investigate the pairing physics in a three-component Fermi-Fermi mixture, where a few fermionic impurities are immersed in a noninteracting two-component Fermi gas with synthetic spin-orbit coupling (SOC), and interact attractively with one spin species in the Fermi gas. Because of the interplay of SOC and the spin-selective interaction, the molecular state intrinsically acquires a nonzero center-of-mass momentum, which results in a new type of Fulde-Ferrell (FF) pairing in spin-orbit coupled Fermi systems. The existence of the Fermi sea can also lead to the competition between FF-like molecular states with different center-of-mass momenta, which corresponds to a first-order transition between FF phases in the thermodynamic limit. As the interaction strength is tuned, a polaron-molecule transition occurs in the highly imbalanced system, where the boundary varies nonmonotonically with SOC parameters and gives rise to the reentrance of polaron states. The rich physics in this system can be probed using existing experimental techniques.