Emergent phenomena in two-dimensional Fermi systems

Peter Schmitteckert

Philipp M. Preiss

Interacting Fermi systems in two dimensions display intriguing phenomena such as high temperature superfluidity and pseudogap physics. These features emerge from the collective behavior of the constituent particles but are extremely hard to predict from microscopic theory. I will report on experiments that realize microscopic two-dimensional systems with ultracold fermionic lithium atoms. With the ability to deterministically prepare few-body ground states and to observe individual particles in momentum space, they enable a microscopic view of strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi systems. Surprisingly, we find that characteristic features of many-body Fermi gases can already be found in systems of no more than a dozen particles: In spectroscopy, we observe collective excitations that are the few-body precursor of the Higgs amplitude mode of a superfluid. Moreover, in spin-resolved momentum space probes, we can directly image individual ‘Cooper pairs’ and show the presence of fermionic pairing even in a microscopic setting. These findings may broaden our understanding of finite-size Fermi systems, such as atomic nuclei and superconducting grains.

Ph. Nozières, Daniel W. Hone, M. E. Rose

Marcus Lingham, Kristian Fenech, Sascha Hoinka +7 more

The dimensionality of an ultracold quantum gas can vastly affect its properties, leading to a great deal of interest in lower dimensional systems. In two dimensions, the transition to superfluidity is a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) [1,2] phase transition. This is identified by the pairing of vortices with opposite circulation and has been observed in Bose gases [3]. Other phenomena that occur in two-dimensional systems include confinement-induced resonances [4] and the emergence of a two-body bound state for arbitrarily weak attractive interactions [5].

Bo-Lun Chen, Su-Peng Kou

Recent experiments on quantum degenerate gases give an opportunity for simulating strongly-correlated electronic systems in optical lattices. It may shed light on some long-standing puzzles in condensed-matter physics, like the nature of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates that had baffled people over two decades. It is believed that the two-dimensional fermionic Hubbard model, or t-J model, contains the key to this problem; but the difficulty of unveiling the mystery of a strongly-interacting fermionic system is also generally acknowledged. Here, as a substitute, we systematically analyze the property of bosonic t-J model simulated in optical superlattices near unit-filling. In particular, we show the emergence of a strange topological Fermi liquid with Fermi surfaces from a purely bosonic system. We also discuss the possibility of observing these phenomena in ultracold atom experiments. The result may provide some crucial insights into the origin of high-T_{c} superconductivity.

Philippe Nozières