Noise Correlations in one-dimensional ultra-cold atom systems

Bo-Bo Wei

Ludwig Mathey

Ehud Altman

Jacek Dobrzyniecki, Giuliano Orso, Tomasz Sowiński

We study the ground-state properties of a two-component one-dimensional system of a few ultra-cold fermions with attractive interactions. We show that, by ramping up an external potential barrier felt by one of the components, it is possible to induce regions of exotic superfluid phases, characterized by a tunable finite net momentum of the Cooper pair, without changing the overall spin populations. We show that these phases, which are the few-body analogs of the celebrated Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state, can be distinguished by analyzing a specific two-particle correlation encoded in the noise correlation function. Our theoretical results can be addressed in current experiments with cold atoms confined in spin-selective optical traps.

C. J. Bolech, Paata Kakashvili

Using two-dimensional optical lattices, it has recently become possible to split up clouds of ultra cold atoms into collections of parallel one-dimensional tubes in which the dynamics is restricted to the direction along their axis. Since the Feshbach-resonance interactions among atoms are short ranged, they can be approximated as contact interactions. It is thus possible to realize optical-trap versions of some classic integrable systems first studied by Lieb, Gaudin, Yang and others. Such systems can display exotic physics like spin-charge separation and unusual paired states. We focus on the study of systems of fermions in one-dimension. At finite temperatures, regimes such as the spin-coherent and the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquids can be realized by tuning the inter-atomic interaction strength and trap parameters. We identify the noise correlation of density fluctuations as a robust observable to discriminate between these two regimes. We also address the effects of spin imbalance for the case of attractive interactions, and study the one-dimensional analog of spatially modulated (FFLO) superconducting states. Our focus is on how the temperature affects the density profiles that are being measured in the experiments. The theoretical study of temperature effects in these systems is of experimental relevance for the problem of thermometry.

Scott R. Taylor, C. Hooley