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Dressed molecules in atomic quantum gases

M. W. J. Romans

Published Feb 7, 2007• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

The use of Feshbach resonances in the field of ultracold gases has received a lot of attention recently. In first instance it was realized that these resonances can be used to alter the interaction strength in an atomic gas, by means of tuning an external magnetic field. Furthermore, by sweeping the magnetic field from one side of the resonance to the other, a degenerate gas of bosonic molecules can be created, a significant accomplishment. By making the interactions between fermionic atoms strongly attractive, a fermionic superfluid was recently made, a feat that has drawn a lot of attention in the physics community and from the media. We present work that describes these many-particle systems near a Feshbach resonance in a comprehensive way by using the concept of dressed molecules. These dressed molecules are essentially two-particle states that are a superposition of a tightly bound bare molecule, and two unbound bare atoms. This description reduces to the correct paired wave-function in the two-body limit. Moreover it gives a physically correct description of all the phenomena mentioned above: the Bose-condensation of a gas near a Feshbach resonance, that contains molecules, is more correctly interpreted as a Bose-condensation of dressed molecules. The fermionic superfluid contains a condensate of bosonic pairs, normally called Cooper pairs, that can be understood as the dressed molecules. For the latter case, the dressed-molecule picture also gives an elegant characterization of the crossover between a Bose condensate of pure molecules on one side of the resonance, to a fermionic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid on the other side. Then, the dressed molecules change continuously from being mostly a bare molecule, to being mostly a loose pair of two atoms. It is clear that the nature of the dressed molecules is much determined by the probability for it to be in the bare-molecular state. This probability we denote with a single parameter Z. We present various ways of calculating it, and study how it affects the macroscopic physics.

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The use of Feshbach resonances in the field of ultracold gases has received a lot of attention recently. In first instance it was realized that these resonances can be used to alter the interaction strength in an atomic gas, by means of tuning an external magnetic field. Furthermore, by sweeping the magnetic field from one side of the resonance to the other, a degenerate gas of bosonic molecules can be created, a significant accomplishment. By making the interactions between fermionic atoms strongly attractive, a fermionic superfluid was recently made, a feat that has drawn a lot of attention in the physics community and from the media. We present work that describes these many-particle systems near a Feshbach resonance in a comprehensive way by using the concept of dressed molecules. These dressed molecules are essentially two-particle states that are a superposition of a tightly bound bare molecule, and two unbound bare atoms. This description reduces to the correct paired wave-function in the two-body limit. Moreover it gives a physically correct description of all the phenomena mentioned above: the Bose-condensation of a gas near a Feshbach resonance, that contains molecules, is more correctly interpreted as a Bose-condensation of dressed molecules. The fermionic superfluid contains a condensate of bosonic pairs, normally called Cooper pairs, that can be understood as the dressed molecules. For the latter case, the dressed-molecule picture also gives an elegant characterization of the crossover between a Bose condensate of pure molecules on one side of the resonance, to a fermionic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid on the other side. Then, the dressed molecules change continuously from being mostly a bare molecule, to being mostly a loose pair of two atoms. It is clear that the nature of the dressed molecules is much determined by the probability for it to be in the bare-molecular state. This probability we denote with a single parameter Z. We present various ways of calculating it, and study how it affects the macroscopic physics.
A self-consistent theory is derived to describe the BCS--Bose-Einstein-condensate crossover for a strongly interacting Fermi gas with a Feshbach resonance. In the theory the fluctuation of the dressed molecules, consisting of both preformed Cooper pairs and ``bare'' Feshbach molecules, has been included within a self-consistent TTT-matrix approximation, beyond the Nozi\`eres and Schmitt-Rink strategy considered by Ohashi and Griffin. The resulting self-consistent equations are solved numerically to investigate the normal-state properties of the crossover at various resonance widths. It is found that the superfluid transition temperature Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ increases monotonically at all widths as the effective interaction between atoms becomes more attractive. Furthermore, a residue factor Zm{Z}_{m}Zm​ of the molecule's Green function and a complex effective mass have been determined to characterize the fraction and lifetime of Feshbach molecules at Tc{T}_{c}Tc​. Our many-body calculations of Zm{Z}_{m}Zm​ agree qualitatively well with recent measurments of the gas of 6Li^{6}\mathrm{Li}6Li atoms near the broad resonance at 834G834\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{G}834G. The crossover from narrow to broad resonances has also been studied.
We present the random phase approximation (RPA) theory of the Bose-Einstein-condensation-Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer crossover in an atomic Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance that includes the relevant two-body atomic physics exactly. This allows us to determine the probability for the dressed molecules in the Bose-Einstein condensate to be in the closed channel of the Feshbach resonance and to compare with the recent experiments of Partridge et al. [95, 020404 (2005)10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.020404] with , who have measured the same quantity.
We study ultracold gases of alkali-metal atoms in the quantum degenerate regime. The interatomic interactions in these type of systems can be tuned using resonances induced by magnetic or electric fields. The tunability of the interactions, together with the possibility of confining the atoms with several kinds of external potentials, allows for a completely novel approach to study basic problems in many-body physics, and moreover, allows to enter regimes which have never been accessible in condensed matter or nuclear physics. For example, this has led to the experimental demonstration of an intimate relation between two types of superfluidity: the crossover from Bose-Einstein condensation of tightly bound molecules to the superfluid behavior related to weakly bound BCS-like pairs. Another experimental landmark was reached when the existence of universal Efimov three-body bound states was proven in experiments with ultracold bosonic cesium atoms. In this thesis, we study several aspects of these strongly interacting and ultracold atomic gases. We develop an analytical model that encapsulates all of the relevant scattering physics in atomic systems where open-channel shape resonances and closedchannel Feshbach resonances give rise to complicated and non-trivial scattering properties. This model provides lots of physical insight and is shown to describe important quantities, such as the molecular energies and scattering phase shifts, with a high level of accuracy. The model is compared to full numerical coupled-channel calculations in two atomic systems: rubidium and lithium. We study the BCS-BEC crossover using a many-body description of the ultracold gas that includes the non-trivial energy dependence of the scattering model. We show that it gives rise to superfluid behavior associated with the formation of BCS-like pairs while the low-energy interactions are repulsive in character. The energy dependence of the interactions is crucial, as it gives rise to attractive interactions at the Fermi energy, necessary for the formation of Cooper pairs. We demonstrate new ways of controlling the interatomic interactions using a combination of magnetic and electric fields. This leads to experimental control of, for instance, the three-body parameter in the context of Efimov physics and of non-universal behavior in the BCS-BEC crossover in fermionic gases. Using a four-body method based on first principles, we solve the molecule-molecule scattering problem to calculate several important properties of bosonic and fermionic Summary 145 molecules that consist of light and heavy atoms. These type of molecules are of current experimental interest, and we predict several exciting relations between three- and four-body observables in these type of systems.
We study the crossover of a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas trapped in the radial plane from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regime to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) regime by crossing a wide Feshbach resonance. We consider two effective two-dimensional Hamiltonians within the mean-field level, and calculate the zero-temperature cloud size and number density distribution. For a model 1 Hamiltonian with renormalized atom-atom interaction, we observe a constant cloud size for arbitrary detunings. For a model 2 Hamiltonian with renormalized interactions between atoms and dressed molecules, the cloud size deceases from the BCS to BEC side, which is consistent with the picture of BCS-BEC crossover. This qualitative discrepancy between the two models indicates that the inclusion of dressed molecules is essential for a mean-field description of quasi-two-dimensional Fermi systems, especially on the BEC side of the Feshbach resonance.
We present a detailed analysis of the two-channel atom-molecule effective Hamiltonian for an ultracold two-component homogeneous Fermi gas interacting near a Feshbach resonance. We particularly focus on the two-body and many-body properties of the dressed molecules in such a gas. An exact result for the many-body T matrix of the two-channel theory is derived by both considering coupled vertex equations and functional-integral methods. Making use of this result allows us to incorporate exactly into the many-body theory the two-body physics of the Feshbach scattering by means of simple analytical formulas without any fitting parameters. New interesting many-body effects are discussed in the case of narrow resonances. We give also a description of the BEC-BCS crossover above and below TC{T}_{C}TC​. The effects of different approximations for the self-energy of the dressed molecules are discussed. The single-channel results are derived as a special limit for broad resonances. Moreover, through an analytic analysis of the BEC limit, the relation between the composite boson of the single-channel model and the dressed-molecule of the two-channel model is established.
Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances were employed to associate cold diatomic molecules in a series of experiments involving both atomic Bose and two-spin-component Fermi gases. This review illustrates theoretical concepts of both the particular nature of the highly excited Feshbach molecules produced and the techniques for their association from unbound atom pairs. Coupled-channels theory provides a rigorous formulation of the microscopic physics of Feshbach resonances in cold gases. Concepts of dressed versus bare energy states, universal properties of Feshbach molecules, and the classification in terms of entrance- and closed-channel-dominated resonances are introduced on the basis of practical two-channel approaches. Their significance is illustrated for several experimental observations, such as binding energies and lifetimes with respect to collisional relaxation. Molecular association and dissociation are discussed in the context of techniques involving linear magnetic-field sweeps in cold Bose and Fermi gases and pulse sequences leading to Ramsey-type interference fringes. Their descriptions in terms of Landau-Zener, two-level mean-field, as well as beyond mean-field approaches are reviewed in detail, including the associated ranges of validity.