This thesis summarizes work on the theory of many-body effects in atomic systems. The modification of emission rates and spectra for a single impurity atom embedded in a many-body system is studied. In addition, the physics of two, cold atom systems is investigated. We first study the spontaneous decay of a source atom inside a dielectric. In a microscopic picture, the photon radiated by the source atom is scattered by the medium atoms. This scattered photon is absorbed by the source atom, which results in a modification of the atom's decay rate. The calculation is carried out to second order in the medium density and we find a result that differs from the one obtained in macroscopic calculations. Using the same microscopic model, we carry out a microscopic calculation for the recoil momentum acquired by a radiating atom in a medium. In our microscopic calculation, the average value of the photon momentum is modified by its scattering with the source atoms. This gives a modification to the recoil momentum of the source atom. The calculated correction agrees with the experimental observations. In the second part of the thesis, we study two, ultra-cold atomic systems. An exactly solvable model, a Tonks-Girardeau gas with a local potential, is explain first. Such a one dimensional quantum gas has been realized recently. The spectrum of the single particle density matrix is evaluated exactly. We find the "condensate density" as a function of the potential strength. We also propose to use time-of-flight imaging to detect experimental observables. The possibility of modulating the interaction strength in space using a Feshbach resonance in a degenerate Fermi gas is examined in the last part of the thesis. Using a periodic modulation, we find that the ground state of the system contains Cooper pairs with non-zero center-of-mass momenta. The resultant single particle spectrum is found to have an additional gap along particular directions. We propose experimental schemes to detect properties of both the ground state and the quasi-particle excitations.
This thesis summarizes work on the theory of many-body effects in atomic systems. The modification of emission rates and spectra for a single impurity atom embedded in a many-body system is studied. In addition, the physics of two, cold atom systems is investigated. We first study the spontaneous decay of a source atom inside a dielectric. In a microscopic picture, the photon radiated by the source atom is scattered by the medium atoms. This scattered photon is absorbed by the source atom, which results in a modification of the atom's decay rate. The calculation is carried out to second order in the medium density and we find a result that differs from the one obtained in macroscopic calculations. Using the same microscopic model, we carry out a microscopic calculation for the recoil momentum acquired by a radiating atom in a medium. In our microscopic calculation, the average value of the photon momentum is modified by its scattering with the source atoms. This gives a modification to the recoil momentum of the source atom. The calculated correction agrees with the experimental observations. In the second part of the thesis, we study two, ultra-cold atomic systems. An exactly solvable model, a Tonks-Girardeau gas with a local potential, is explain first. Such a one dimensional quantum gas has been realized recently. The spectrum of the single particle density matrix is evaluated exactly. We find the "condensate density" as a function of the potential strength. We also propose to use time-of-flight imaging to detect experimental observables. The possibility of modulating the interaction strength in space using a Feshbach resonance in a degenerate Fermi gas is examined in the last part of the thesis. Using a periodic modulation, we find that the ground state of the system contains Cooper pairs with non-zero center-of-mass momenta. The resultant single particle spectrum is found to have an additional gap along particular directions. We propose experimental schemes to detect properties of both the ground state and the quasi-particle excitations.
In the present thesis we study several schemes where the detection of the emitted light from an atomic ensemble gives information about the state of the atoms. In chapter 1 we review the basic theory for the light matter interaction in second quantized form. In chapter 2 we show how conservative potentials for the atoms, such as dispersive optical lattices, can be realized experimentally due to the dispersive interaction with a far detuned laser We then review some basic properties of the physics of a particle in a periodic potential. We show that the ground state and the lowest lying excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dispersive optical lattice can be described by the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. In chapter 3 we study the photonic bandstructure of a chain of fixed pointlike atoms in a biperiodic configuration. We calculate the photonic spectra and the probe transmission if the atoms are in free space and inside a standing wave optical resonator. In chapter 4 we consider light scattering from ultracold atoms in an optical lattice where we calculate the photonic scattering cross section as a function of energy and direction of emission along the Mott-insulator-superfluid phase transition. We take into account the finite tunneling rate for the atoms, when evaluating the scattering cross section of the photons and the effect of photon recoil onto the atoms. In chapter 5 we consider a gas of ultracold atoms trapped at two spatially separated regions in space. Using a two Raman lasers to couple atoms out of the systems we show that it is possible to measure the mean value of the atomic field operator of the two systems by measuring the scattered light intensity of one of the Raman lasers. We show how this setup might be used to measure the temperature of a Bose-Einstein condensate and to monitor the superfluid to Mott-insulator phase transition for a gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice.
Universality is a crucial concept in modern physics, which allows us to describe phenomena without referring to microscopic details of systems.The unitary Fermi gas is a prime example, where universal relations among physical observables and a universal equation of state have been developed and studied in detail.In this thesis, we extend these notions beyond the paradigm of the unitary Fermi gas and investigate universal effects of few-body correlations in resonantly interacting ultracold atomic gases.In particular, we discuss (i) universal relations in a spinless Fermi gas with an anisotropic p-wave resonance and (ii) universality of the few-body spectra and the ground-state properties of an impurity-boson system.Firstly, we investigate the universal relations in a spinless Fermi gas with an anisotropic p-wave resonance.We show that the high-momentum distribution and the short-range density-density correlation have characteristic power laws, whose coefficients define the p-wave contact tensor.We derive the adiabatic sweep theorem, which relates the p-wave contact tensor to the total energy.We also discuss the experimental scheme to measure the p-wave contact tensor and test our results.Secondly, we examine the ground states and lower excited states of an impurity resonantly interacting with one, two, and three non-interacting bosons.We calculate the energy spectra of this few-body system with two different models.The overall scale of length depends on the models.However, we find that once we fix the three-body parameter, which is a critical scattering length of the ground-state Efimov trimer, the few-body spectrum is independent of a specific choice of the models.This finding is corroborated by comparing our numerical results with the one obtained by Ardila and Giorgini [Phys.Rev. A 92, 033612 (2015)].Thirdly, we investigate the case in which the mass of an impurity is infinite.In this limit, we show that the model of a Feshbach resonance can be mapped to a bosonic extension of Anderson's single impurity model, which can be used to analytically solve the three-body problem.We find that the ground-state energy with a Feshbach resonance is drastically different from that in a potential-interaction system, and that the former approaches the latter logarithmically as the unitarity limit is taken.We argue This thesis would not have been possible without the help and support of many people.I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Masahito Ueda, for his guidance and sincere encouragement over the period of my PhD program.He was a great teacher; he taught me a lot of things, from the way of a good scientist to a key to happy married life.I would also like to thank my secondary supervisors, Professor Tetsuo Hatsuda and Professor Junji Yumoto, for valuable advice on my study, and sometimes on job hunting.They also organized meetings where I could learn studies of other students.Much of the work in this thesis started during my stay at Quantum Matter group in Monash University, where I greatly benefited from fruitful collaboration with the group members.I am deeply grateful to Professor Meera M. Parish
This thesis presents a set of studies on atomic systems where quantum effects are particularly relevant. These studies have been developed by applying a variety of tools from many-body physics. First of all, we have studied the prospects for the existence of a superfluid transition in an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms, by generalizing the BCS theory of superconductivity to the case when the two species that pair have different densities and the ground state may spontaneously break one or more symmetries. In a second part, we have studied the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate whose spin degree of freedom is free to evolve inside a quasi-onedimensional optical trap. We have used a mean-field formulation to address both the zero temperature case and the finite temperature one. Finally, we have performed a careful study of the ground state and the line tension of two-dimensional systems of helium-4. First, we have used Monte Carlo techniques, then with a Density Functional built on-purpose. Comments are welcome! KEYWORDS: Cold gases, Pairing, Spinor condensate, Helium, Two dimensions
In this thesis, cold gases as well as the electron gas are analyzed with two expansion techniques that have, in essence, the same aim: To describe parameter regimes where the few-body aspect dominates over the collective many-body behavior.The Operator Product Expansion (OPE) of quantum field theory is used to extract high-frequency properties of the correlation function that determines the radio-frequency (RF) response of a two-dimensional Fermi gas with zero-range interactions.Exact sum rules that relate the zeroth and first moment of the radio-frequency spectrum to the particle number and the contact of the gas, are derived from these properties.A quantum cluster (virial-) expansion is employed to study the properties of the spectral function of the two-dimensional Fermi gas at small to moderate degeneracy.From the spectral function, observables like the density of states and the momentum distribution are calculated and are found to be in excellent agreement with Tan's universal relations.In the second part of the thesis, the cluster expansion is applied to both bosonic and fermionic three-dimensional quantum gases.Virial coefficients, contacts and momentum distribution are calculated up to third order in the fugacity.This includes three-particle correlations exactly.The results are are in excellent agreement with known universal relations.In the third part of this thesis, an OPE is applied to the problem of the interacting electron gas in both two and three dimensions.A power-law decay of the momentum distribution and the static structure factor at high momenta is found, compatible with earlier findings by J. Kimball.
Subject of this thesis is the theoretical investigation of ensembles of atoms that are coherently laser-excited to a Rydberg state. Rydberg excited atoms interact with each other over large distances, which leads to strongly correlated many-body dynamics, demanding powerful numerical tools for their modeling. The first part of the thesis deals with effective two-level atoms consisting of a ground and a Rydberg state only. For resonant laser excitation a modified scaling behavior of the excitation number is observed, which is caused by effects of finite system size and coarse graining of the medium due to the finite atomic density. For off-resonant excitation, ordered structures arise out of an initially homogeneous gas, which are reflected in strongly peaked spatial correlations and modified excitation statistics. In the second part a fast decaying intermediate level is additionally taken into account. In this situation the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is encountered. This effect is suppressed in the presence of strong interactions between the Rydberg atoms leading to an optical nonlinearity. A model predicting the properties of a cloud of Rydberg atoms in EIT configuration is developed. In both parts the models are validated by comparing their predictions to recent experimental observations.
The research described in this thesis is part of an international effort with the aim of studying ultracold quantum degenerate gas samples like Bose-Einstein condensates and Fermi degenerate systems, consisting of atoms confined in magnetic or optical traps. The behavior of such samples is governed by the inter-atomic interactions and the resulting properties of the atom-atom scattering. At the relevant temperatures of 1nK to 10µK a key property is the atom-atom scattering length a. In chapter 2 a theoretical method is presented which enables one to describe the interaction and scattering of (ultra)cold atoms to unprecedented precision. It is also unparalleled in comprehensiveness: it allows the prediction of a large and varied set of experimental data for all isotopes of the same element. The method relies on the extraction from experiments of a few (phase) parameters which completely summarize the behavior of the atoms in the (ultra)cold regime. In chapter 3 the method is applied to the "workhorses" of cold-atom physics: the atomic species 85Rb and 87Rb. We extract the foregoing parameters to a very high precision from several recent high precision experiments, allowing us to predict e.g. the 87Rb spinor condensate to be ferromagnetic: a prediction for which the scattering length has to be calculated with a precision better than 1%. We also predict Feshbach resonances at experimentally accessible magnetic field strengths; resonances searched for and found by the experimental group of Rempe. In close collaboration with his group we "fine-tune" the interaction parameters found previously, by making use of only one of the observed resonances. We then obtain agreement with 42 out of the observed 43 resonance field strengths and are able to identify bound states inducing the Feshbach resonances at these locations. Chapter 4 describes the results of this research. With a thorough understanding of the rubidium interactions, we then switch to lithium which has a fermionic (6Li) and a bosonic (7Li) isotope. Both are being used in cold-atom experiments. In chapter 5 we evaluate the interaction parameters for lithium allowing us to predict magnetic field strengths for which a sample of fermionic 6Li atoms can be regarded as strongly interacting. Furthermore, a three-level method for measuring mean-field shifts, based on radio-frequency techniques, is introduced. For weak interactions we find proportionality of resonance shifts to interaction strengths. In the strongly interacting regime, however, these shifts become very small reflecting the quantum unitarity limit and many-body effects. Most interesting is the fact that in this regime the shifts are small both for large positive a and for large negative a, likely reflecting the universality of the interaction energy. In chapters 6 and 7 the interactions between lithium atoms are reinvestigated, making use of newly available experimental data and with the updated interaction parameters special attention is paid to locating field strengths at which magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances occur in the scattering of lithium atoms. In chapter 6 scattering events in a gas of (fermionic) 6Li atoms are studied. In chapter 7 we show that a consistent description of the 6Li+6Li system can be given. We discuss theoretical uncertainties for the position of the wide 6Li Feshbach resonance and present an analytic scattering model for this resonance, based on the inclusion of a field-dependent virtual open-channel state. We predict new Feshbach resonances for the 6Li-7Li system, and their importance for different types of crossover superfluidity models is discussed. Molecules created by magnetically sweeping over these resonances will have a fermionic character. One magnetic field strength is predicted at which two different fermionic molecules can be created simultaneously.