In the first part of this thesis, we present an inhomogeneous theory for the low-temperature properties of a resonantly interacting Fermi mixture in a trap that goes beyond the local-density approximation. We compare a Bogoliubov-de Gennes and a Landau-Ginzburg approach that both include mean-field-like self-energy effects to account for the strong interactions at unitarity. We conclude that the Landau-Ginzburg approach is more appropriate when dealing with a first-order phase transition. We show diagrammatically how these self-energy effects arise from fluctuations in the superfluid order parameter. Gradient terms of the order parameter are included to account for inhomogeneities. This approach incorporates the state-of-the-art knowledge of the homogeneous mixture with a population imbalance exactly and gives good agreement with the experimental density profiles of Shin et al. [Nature 451, 689 (2008)]. We calculate the universal surface tension due to the observed interface between the equal-density superfluid and the partially polarized normal state of the mixture. We find that the exotic and gapless superfluid Sarma phase can be stabilized at this interface, even when this phase is unstable in the bulk of the gas. We also discuss the possibility of a metastable state to explain the deformation of the superfluid core that is seen in the experiment of Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. In the second part, we show that a two-channel mean-field theory for a Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance allows for an analytic computation of the chemical potential, and therefore the universal constant β, at unitarity. To improve on this mean-field theory, which physically neglects condensate depletion, we study a variational Jastrow ansatz for the ground-state wavefunction and use the hypernetted-chain (HNC/0) approximation to minimize the energy for all positive values of the scattering length. We also show that other important physical quantities such as Tan's contact and the condensate fraction can be directly obtained from this approach.
In the first part of this thesis, we present an inhomogeneous theory for the low-temperature properties of a resonantly interacting Fermi mixture in a trap that goes beyond the local-density approximation. We compare a Bogoliubov-de Gennes and a Landau-Ginzburg approach that both include mean-field-like self-energy effects to account for the strong interactions at unitarity. We conclude that the Landau-Ginzburg approach is more appropriate when dealing with a first-order phase transition. We show diagrammatically how these self-energy effects arise from fluctuations in the superfluid order parameter. Gradient terms of the order parameter are included to account for inhomogeneities. This approach incorporates the state-of-the-art knowledge of the homogeneous mixture with a population imbalance exactly and gives good agreement with the experimental density profiles of Shin et al. [Nature 451, 689 (2008)]. We calculate the universal surface tension due to the observed interface between the equal-density superfluid and the partially polarized normal state of the mixture. We find that the exotic and gapless superfluid Sarma phase can be stabilized at this interface, even when this phase is unstable in the bulk of the gas. We also discuss the possibility of a metastable state to explain the deformation of the superfluid core that is seen in the experiment of Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. In the second part, we show that a two-channel mean-field theory for a Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance allows for an analytic computation of the chemical potential, and therefore the universal constant β, at unitarity. To improve on this mean-field theory, which physically neglects condensate depletion, we study a variational Jastrow ansatz for the ground-state wavefunction and use the hypernetted-chain (HNC/0) approximation to minimize the energy for all positive values of the scattering length. We also show that other important physical quantities such as Tan's contact and the condensate fraction can be directly obtained from this approach.
We present an inhomogeneous theory for the low-temperature properties of a resonantly interacting Fermi mixture in a trap that goes beyond the local-density approximation. We compare the Bogoliubov-de Gennes and a Landau-Ginzburg approach and conclude that the latter is more appropriate when dealing with a first-order phase transition. Our approach incorporates the state-of-the-art knowledge on the homogeneous mixture with a population imbalance exactly and gives good agreement with the experimental density profiles of Shin {\it et al}. [Nature {\bf 451}, 689 (2008)]. We calculate the universal surface tension due to the observed interface between the equal-density superfluid and the partially polarized normal state of the mixture. We find that the exotic and gapless superfluid Sarma phase can be stabilized at this interface, even when this phase is unstable in the bulk of the gas.
We argue that the energy of a strongly interacting gas in the unitary limit is parametrized by a universal constant β. For fermions, this parameter is known, but not for bosons. Finding β for bosons is the goal of this thesis. We present the basics of scattering theory, including the s-wave scattering length, which is the characteristic length scale for the interactions at low energies and which goes to infinity at unitarity. Shape and Feshbach resonances are explained. The conventional theory for Bose gases, Bogoliubov theory, is presented, which takes into account quantum fluctuations. It is used to derive identities for the groundstate energy, the condensate fraction and the contact. These are given as expansions in the scattering length, which therefore only hold true for weak interactions. To improve on this, we present an effective action from an atom-molecule theory, which also allows bound states. By a mean-field approach we derive universal identities for the associated energy scales, and in the unitary limit an analytical expression is found for the chemical potential, from which the value β = −0.54 is found. However, this mean-field result is qualitatively not reliable, since quantum depletion is neglected. A new approach is introduced, starting with a Jastrow Ansatz, from which the energy is expressed in the Jastrow function f and radial distribution function g. A cluster expansion is made for g, where a diagrammatic analogy is found. The Hyper-Netted Chain approximation is introduced to calculate g systematically by summing infinitely many diagrams. In HNC/0, we minimize the energy by a variational method, which is based on a well-constructed Ansatz for g. Numerical results using the HNC/0 approximation are given not only for the ground-state energy, but also for the condensate density and the contact. For large scattering lengths the calculations became increasingly less accurate, but the results from Bogoliubov theory are correctly included for small a. An extrapolation for the ground-state energy is made to find β ' −0.20, which is expected to be an upper bound. Moreover, quantum depletion is found to be higher when calculated in HNC/0 for large scattering lengths. Also, it is found that the contact at this value for unitarity remains finite and acquires the value of C ' 10.3n4/3, which is remarkably close to the value for fermions, C ' 11n4/3. Cover image courtesy of [18].
In the first part of this thesis, we present a unified kinetic theory that describes the finite-temperature, non-equilibrium dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensed gas interacting with a thermal cloud in a trap. This theory includes binary interactions to second order in the interaction potential and reduces to a diagonal quantum Boltzmann equation for Bogoliubov quasiparticles. The Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov interactions include the pairing field and are expressed as many-body T matrices to second order. The interactions thus include the correct renormalized scattering physics. This renormalized theory is automatically gapless. Thus, the excited Bogoliubov modes are naturally orthogonal to the condensate ground state. This kinetic theory is a complete second-order theory that reduces to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the quantum Boltzmann equation in the respective limits and thus is capable of describing the system over a wide temperature range. In the second part, we consider a many-body theory of a dilute Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance. Experiments explore the crossover physics between the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity of a two-spin Fermi gas, and the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of composite bosons. We consider correlations between a composite boson and a fermion pair and show that such correlations are the minimal ingredients needed in a many-body theory to generate the correct boson-boson scattering length in the Bose-Einstein limit of the crossover. We also use imaginary-time propagation to find zero-temperature ground states in the BCS/BEC crossover. A cumulant expansion allows us to systematically include higher-order interactions between bosons and fermions. In particular, we calculate the Hartree term across the resonance. We further apply the cumulant-expansion method to thermal fermions and composite bosons interacting above the transition temperature in the normal phase. We numerically calculate the full time dependence in ramps across the resonance in this regime and find different two-body and many-body time scales in the system. We calculate molecular conversion efficiencies as a function of temperature and phase-space density, and find good agreement with results from JILA potassium experiments.
In this thesis we present a detailed investigation of the role played by quantum and thermal fluctuations in ultracold Bose gases. We begin with a review of several important concepts and analytical tools within a functional integration formalism. We first focus on the so-called zero-range approximation for the interaction potential, by recovering the Bogoliubov results and the Landau two-fluid model from a field-theory perspective. In deriving the beyond-mean-field equation of state, we are going to show that a crucial point concerns the proper regularization of the divergent zero-point energy. Among the alternative approaches to investigate finite-temperatures Bose gases, we apply the kinetic theory to explain some recent results on the sound propagation in two-dimensional Bose gases. We then move to consider the eventual corrections to the thermodynamics of Bose gases due to the finite-range character of the interaction potential. The coupling constants of the finite-range model are related to measurable scattering parameters through an effective-field-theory approach. The role of finite-range corrections is considered not only in three spatial dimensions but also in systems with lower dimensionalities. Our analytical predictions are in good agreement with available Monte Carlo simulations and consistent with other theoretical frames, as the Lieb-Lininger theory for one-dimensional systems. In the third chapter, the relevance of fluctuations is investigated from an alternative point of view. Indeed, for a single-component Bose gas we have actually considered their effect as deviations of thermodynamic quantities from the mean-field and zero-range picture. In the case of collapsing Bose mixtures, we are going to show that zero-temperature fluctuations play a crucial stabilizing role against the collapse instability. Because of this peculiar mechanism, ultracold mixtures can display finite-density configurations also in free space. Inspired by recent experiments, we characterize this novel self-bound state by comparison with bright solitons, following a variational scheme. We also consider the case of binary mixtures where a coherent internal coupling is turned on. In the last chapter, we move to deal with dipolar condensates. In particular, we are interested in beyond-mean-field effects leading to the formation of inhomogeneous ground states. In order to provide a reliable answer to the open issue of superfluid properties of these structures, we present our recent numerical investigation on the phase diagram of dipolar bosons.
This doctoral dissertation is concerned with the physics of strongly interacting cold alkali atoms at low temperatures near a Feshbach resonance. In Chapter 1, we establish a connection between superfluid 4He and the BCS theory of superconductivity, and cold alkali atoms. We give the history of cold atoms, describing the significant achievements, pitfalls and challenges. In Chapter 2, we explore the thermodynamics of strongly interacting Bosonic atoms. We explore the stability of atomic Bosonic condensates near a Feshbach resonance. We show that the experimentally attained atomic condensate is a saddle point of the free energy, but the kinetics of its decay is slow. We also show that there is a second, higher density condensate branch which has an Ising-like phase transition to a molecular (paired) condensate when ramped across the Feshbach resonance. We argue that due to the high density, inelastic 3-body processes possibly render this transition unobservable. In Chapter 3, we explore the thermodynamics of Fermionic atoms near a Feshbach resonance. We determine the zero-temperature (T less than/less than T sub(F) ) pair propagator for a spinimbalanced mixture of up and down spin Fermions, and use it to show that such a mixture becomes completely polarized at mu sub(down arrow)= -0.9 mu sub(up arrow) . We also determine the Thouless criterion for superfluidity in a spin-imbalanced Fermi mixture, and construct a phase diagram of such a system at zero temperature. We then compare our results with experiments performed by two different groups. We find that interaction modifications to the minority spin self-energy inferred from our analysis is roughly double those observed in experiments. This discrepancy is consistent with the expected accuracy of the theory. In Chapter 4, we extend our analysis of the preceding chapter to calculate the surface tension of an interface between spin-polarized Fermions in the normal and superfluid phases. We show that, as expected, this surface tension decreases with increasing temperature and vanishes at a tricritical temperature, above which the transition becomes continuous. We also calculate the thickness of the interface; at T = 0, this is a few interparticle spacings, but diverges at the tricritical temperature. To compare with a set of relevant experiments, we also develop a phenomenological model for surface tension, and conclude that experimental surface tensions are an order of magnitude higher than what our microscopic calculation yields. We hypothesize possible mechanisms. In Chapter 5, we calculate the finite temperature phase diagram of a Bose-Fermi mixture produced from a spin-imbalanced two-component Fermi gas deep in the BEC phase. We show that there is a discontinuous transition between the superfluid and normal phase, with an entropy of mixing sufficient to cool the system down. We detail the construction of such a cooling scheme to cool a Fermi system below what is possible evaporatively, and find that the cooling efficiency is comparable to typical evaporative schemes. In Chapter 6, we shift our focus from thermodynamics to dynamics. We calculate shifts in the energy spectrum of a spin-balanced Fermionic superfluid of Cooper pairs due to the presence of energetically close states coupled by a Feshbach resonance. These shifts manifest themselves as clock-shifts in the radio-frequency spectrum of the superfluid. In addition to a broad asymmetric peak coming from the break-up of Cooper pairs, we find (for certain parameter ranges) a sharp, symmetric "bound-bound" spectral line coming from the conversion of Cooper pairs in one channel to pairs or molecules in another channel. Our theory shows remarkable quantitative agreement with experiments performed by an experimental group.
We consider imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mix-tures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species both occupying only a single hyperfine state. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be differ-ent, which leads to a spin imbalance, or spin polarization. Two different atomic species also lead to a mass imbalance. Imbalanced Fermi gases are relevant to condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics. They have been studied intensively in recent years, following their experimental realization in ultracold atomic Fermi gases. The experimental control in such a system allows for a systematic study of the equation of state and the phase diagram as a function of temperature, spin polarization and interaction strength. In this re-view, we discuss the progress in understanding strongly-interacting imbalanced Fermi gases, where a main goal is to describe the results of the highly controlled experiments. We start by discussing Feshbach resonances, after which we treat the imbalanced Fermi gas in mean-field theory to give an introduction to the relevant physics. We encounter several unusual superfluid phases, including phase-separation, gapless Sarma superfluidity, and supersolidity. To obtain a more quantitative description of the experiments, we review also more sophisti-cated techniques, such as diagrammatic methods and the renormalization-group theory. We end the review by discussing two theoretical approaches to treat the inhomogeneous imbalanced Fermi gas, namely the Landau-Ginzburg theory and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach. Key words: