According to the mean-field theory a condensed Bose-Bose mixture collapses when the interspecies attraction becomes stronger than the geometrical average of the intraspecies repulsions, $g_{12}^2>g_{11} g_{22}$. We show that instead of collapsing such a mixture gets into a dilute liquid-like droplet state stabilized by quantum fluctuations thus providing a direct manifestation of beyond mean-field effects. We study various properties of the droplet and find, in particular, that in a wide range of parameters its excitation spectrum lies entirely above the particle emission threshold. The droplet thus automatically evaporates itself to zero temperature, the property potentially interesting by itself and from the viewpoint of sympathetic cooling of other systems.
According to the mean-field theory a condensed Bose-Bose mixture collapses when the interspecies attraction becomes stronger than the geometrical average of the intraspecies repulsions, g122>g11g22. We show that instead of collapsing such a mixture gets into a dilute liquid-like droplet state stabilized by quantum fluctuations thus providing a direct manifestation of beyond mean-field effects. We study various properties of the droplet and find, in particular, that in a wide range of parameters its excitation spectrum lies entirely above the particle emission threshold. The droplet thus automatically evaporates itself to zero temperature, the property potentially interesting by itself and from the viewpoint of sympathetic cooling of other systems.
According to the mean-field theory a condensed Bose-Bose mixture collapses when the interspecies attraction becomes stronger than the geometrical average of the intraspecies repulsions, g_{12}^{2}>g_{11}g_{22}. We show that instead of collapsing such a mixture gets into a dilute liquidlike droplet state stabilized by quantum fluctuations thus providing a direct manifestation of beyond mean-field effects. We study various properties of the droplet and find, in particular, that in a wide range of parameters its excitation spectrum lies entirely above the particle emission threshold. The droplet thus automatically evaporates itself to zero temperature, the property potentially interesting by itself and from the viewpoint of sympathetic cooling of other systems.
We theoretically investigate the finite-temperature structure and collective excitations of a self-bound ultradilute Bose droplet in a flat space realized in a binary Bose mixture with attractive inter-species interactions on the verge of mean-field collapse. As the droplet formation relies critically on the repulsive force provided by Lee–Huang–Yang quantum fluctuations, which can be easily compensated by thermal fluctuations, we find a significant temperature effect in the density distribution and collective excitation spectrum of the Bose droplet. A finite-temperature phase diagram as a function of the number of particles is determined. We show that the critical number of particles at the droplet-to-gas transition increases dramatically with increasing temperature. Towards the bulk threshold temperature for thermally destabilizing an infinitely large droplet, we find that the excitation-forbidden, self-evaporation region in the excitation spectrum, predicted earlier by Petrov using a zero-temperature theory, shrinks and eventually disappears. All the collective excitations, including both surface modes and compressional bulk modes, become softened at the droplet-to-gas transition. The predicted temperature effects of a self-bound Bose droplet in this work could be difficult to measure experimentally due to the lack of efficient thermometry at low temperatures. However, these effects may already present in the current cold-atom experiments.
We revisit the Bogoliubov theory of quantum droplets proposed by Petrov [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 155302 (2015)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.115.155302] for an ultracold Bose-Bose mixture, where the mean-field collapse is stabilized by the Lee-Huang-Yang quantum fluctuations. We show that a loophole in Petrov's theory, i.e., the ignorance of the softening complex Bogoliubov spectrum, can be naturally removed by the introduction of bosonic pairing. The pairing leads to weaker mean-field attractions, and also a stronger Lee-Huang-Yang term in the case of unequal intraspecies interactions. As a result, the equilibrium density for the formation of self-bound droplets significantly decreases in the deep droplet regime, in agreement with a recent observation from diffusion Monte Carlo simulations. Our construction of a consistent Bogoliubov theory paves the way to understand the puzzling low critical number of small quantum droplets observed in the experiment [C. Cabrera et al., Science 359, 301 (2018)SCIEAS0036-807510.1126/science.aao5686].
In a binary quantum droplet, the interspecies attraction dominates over the intraspecies repulsions and the mean-field energy is unstable. The mechanical stability is restored by the repulsive Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) energy [D. S. Petrov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 155302 (2015)]. In the Bogoliubov theory of the binary quantum droplet, there are two branches of gapless excitations. The lower branch describes the phonon excitation and its energy is imaginary in the long-wavelength limit, implying dynamical instability. Recently, it was found that the phonon energy is renormalized by higher-order quantum fluctuations and the dynamical instability is removed [Q. Gu and L. Yin, Phys. Rev. B 102, 220503(R) (2020)]. In this paper, we study a binary quantum droplet in the path-integral formalism to construct an effective model with the correct phonon energy. By integrating out the upper excitation branch, we obtain an effective single-mode model describing density fluctuations, and derive the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation (EGPE). In this approach, the LHY energy in the EGPE is purely positive without any assumption of neglecting the imaginary part. This effective single-mode model can be also used outside and close to the quantum droplet region such as in the LHY gas. Based on this effective model, we obtain the phase diagram of a uniform binary Bose system near the mean-field unstable point, which can be tested in experiments.
Motivated by recent experimental advances in bubble traps which confine atoms on a thin shell, we investigate the stabilization of droplet states of a Bose-Bose mixture on a spherical surface due to quantum fluctuations. We analytically calculate the energy of a weakly interacting Bose-Bose mixture on a spherical surface with attractive interspecies and repulsive intraspecies interactions using the Bogoliubov approximation. Our findings show that the energy per particle has a minimum at a finite density in the presence of the Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) term, which indicates the presence of liquidlike droplet state stabilized by quantum fluctuations. We also numerically solve the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation, incorporating both bubble traps and an additional repulsive LHY correction derived from the Bogoliubov spectrum of a three-dimensional homogeneous mixture. Our calculations show that, due to the size limitations of the sphere, droplet states can only exist within specific parameter ranges. We also verify the transition between droplet states and uniform condensates in spherical confinement potentials, as well as the coexistence of the two. Our results pave the way for future exploration of quantum droplets in curved geometries with nontrivial real-space topologies.
We study spin and density excitations of one-dimensional self-bound Bose-Bose droplets within Bogoliubov theory, and show that spin excitations come alive, especially as the interspecies coupling is made less attractive. We argue that spin excitations are particularly relevant in the one-dimensional droplet regime, where droplets are realized within the mean-field stability regime, as has been confirmed by the quantum Monte Carlo simulations. As the interspecies coupling strength increases within the mean-field stability regime, spin modes ultimately fall below the particle-emission threshold, thus becoming observable in the droplet spectrum. We analyze the Bogoliubov model for both pseudospinor and population-imbalanced scalar mixtures, encompassing both the density and spin sectors. We corroborate our findings through variational analysis of density- and spin-breathing modes, which offers physical insight into the mode structure and independently validates the spectrum, as well as through real-time dynamics. Additionally, we compare our results with both Petrov's original theory, which considers the Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) correction at the attractive edge of the mean-field stability regime, and a beyond-LHY description of Bose-Bose mixtures.