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A glance at the imaginary world of ultracold atoms

Jens Braun, Jiunn-Wei Chen, Jian Deng, Joaquín E. Drut, Bengt L. Friman, Chen‐Te Ma, Yu-Dai Tsai

Published Sep 14, 2012• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

From ultracold atoms to quantum chromodynamics, reliable ab initio studies of strongly interacting fermions require numerical methods, typically in some form of quantum Monte Carlo calculation. Unfortunately, (non)relativistic systems at finite density (spin polarization) generally have a sign problem, such that those ab initio calculations are impractical. It is well-known, however, that in the relativistic case imaginary chemical potentials solve this problem, assuming the data can be analytically continued to the real axis. Is this feasible for nonrelativistic systems? Are the interesting features of the phase diagram accessible in this manner? By introducing complex chemical potentials, for real total particle number and imaginary polarization, the sign problem is avoided in the nonrelativistic case. To give a first answer to the above questions, we perform a mean-field study of the finite-temperature phase diagram of spin-1/2 fermions with imaginary polarization.

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From ultracold atoms to quantum chromodynamics, reliable ab initio studies of strongly interacting fermions require numerical methods, typically in some form of quantum Monte Carlo calculation. Unfortunately, (non)relativistic systems at finite density (spin polarization) generally have a sign problem, such that those ab initio calculations are impractical. It is well-known, however, that in the relativistic case imaginary chemical potentials solve this problem, assuming the data can be analytically continued to the real axis. Is this feasible for nonrelativistic systems? Are the interesting features of the phase diagram accessible in this manner? By introducing complex chemical potentials, for real total particle number and imaginary polarization, the sign problem is avoided in the nonrelativistic case. To give a first answer to the above questions, we perform a mean-field study of the finite-temperature phase diagram of spin-1/2 fermions with imaginary polarization.
From ultracold atoms to quantum chromodynamics, reliable ab initio studies of strongly interacting fermions require numerical methods, typically in some form of quantum Monte Carlo calculation. Unfortunately, (non)relativistic systems at finite density (spin polarization) generally have a sign problem, such that those ab initio calculations are impractical. It is well-known, however, that in the relativistic case imaginary chemical potentials solve this problem, assuming the data can be analytically continued to the real axis. Is this feasible for nonrelativistic systems? Are the interesting features of the phase diagram accessible in this manner? By introducing complex chemical potentials, for real total particle number and imaginary polarization, the sign problem is avoided in the nonrelativistic case. To give a first answer to the above questions, we perform a mean-field study of the finite-temperature phase diagram of spin-1/2 fermions with imaginary polarization.
Fermi gases in strongly coupled regimes are inherently challenging for many-body methods. Although progress has been made analytically, quantitative results require ab initio numerical approaches, such as Monte-Carlo (MC) calculations. However, mass-imbalanced and spin-imbalanced gases are not accessible to MC calculations due to the infamous sign problem. For finite spin imbalance, the problem can be circumvented using imaginary polarizations and analytic continuation, and large parts of the phase diagram then become accessible. We propose to apply this strategy to the mass-imbalanced case, which opens up the possibility to study the associated phase diagram with MC calculations. We perform a first mean-field analysis which suggests that zero-temperature studies, as well as detecting a potential (tri)critical point, are feasible.
Fermi gases in strongly coupled regimes, such as the unitary limit, are inherently challenging for many-body methods. Although much progress has been made with purely analytic methods, quantitative results require ab initio numerical approaches, such as Monte Carlo (MC) calculations. However, mass-imbalanced and spin-imbalanced gases are not accessible to MC calculations due to the infamous sign problem. It was recently pointed out that the sign problem, for fi nite spin imbalance, can be circumvented by resorting to imaginary polarizations and analytic continuation. Large parts of the phase diagram spanned by temperature and polarization then become accessible to MC calculations. We propose to apply a similar strategy to the mass-imbalanced case, which opens up the possibility to study the associated phase diagram with MC calculations. In particular, our analysis suggests that a detection of a (tri-)critical point in this phase diagram is possible. We also discuss calculations in the zero-temperature limit with our approach.
We present a nonperturbative computation of the equation of state of polarized, attractively interacting, nonrelativistic fermions in one spatial dimension at finite temperature. We show results for the density, spin magnetization, magnetic susceptibility, and Tan's contact. We compare with the second-order virial expansion, a next-to-leading-order lattice perturbation theory calculation, and interpret our results in terms of pairing correlations. Our lattice Monte Carlo calculations implement an imaginary chemical potential difference to avoid the sign problem. The thermodynamic results on the imaginary side are analytically continued to obtain results on the real axis. We focus on an intermediate- to strong-coupling regime, and cover a wide range of temperatures and spin imbalances.
Strongly coupled quantum matter displays a rich phenomenology including phase transitions and often unexpected collective behavior. Remarkable advances in experiments with ultracold Fermi gases allow us to gain deep insight into these intriguing systems. Their theoretical description, however, is often challenging as exact analytic solutions are available only in a few special cases, and approximate techniques such as mean-field or perturbation theory are of limited use. Numerical treatment with Monte Carlo (MC) methods has led to profound success in this regard. Unfortunately, for many systems - and especially for asymmetric quantum gases - the infamous sign problem slows progress due to an exponentially scaling of the computational effort with inceasing system size. In this thesis, we set out to explore the rich physics of two-component Fermi gases in the presence of finite spin polarization and/or mass imbalance. To surmount an arising sign problem, we learn from methodological advances made in the field of quantum chromodynamics and further develop these lattice approaches in the context of nonrelativistic Fermi gases. An extensive overview of the numerical methods is presented, including several toy problems to detail the capabilities and shortcomings of the developed approaches. With these tools in hand, we perform extensive benchmarks of the hybrid Monte Carlo method with imaginary asymmetries (iHMC) and the complex Langevin (CL) method, which is based on a complex version of stochastic quantization. Both approaches are shown to yield excellent results for the ground-state energy equation of state of mass-imbalanced Fermi gases in one spatial dimension. Due to its great versatility, the CL method is subsequently employed to study pairing in one-dimensional Fermi gases, for which suitable two-body correlations are computed, revealing unexpected pairing patterns for spin- and mass-imbalanced systems. Another major system of interest in this thesis is the paradigmatic unitary Fermi gas which is investigated at finite temperature and spin polarization. A precise determination of the density equation of state in the normal phase enables us to explore a broad range of thermodynamic properties. We infer valuable information on the finite-temperature phase diagram, such as a flat phase boundary of the normal-to-superfluid transition near the balanced limit and indications for the absence of an extensive pseudogap phase above this transition. The presented results provide experimentally testable ab initio predictions for a range of previously inaccessible thermodynamic quantities.
The calculation of the ground state and thermodynamics of mass-imbalanced Fermi systems is a challenging many-body problem. Even in one spatial dimension, analytic solutions are limited to special configurations and numerical progress with standard Monte Carlo approaches is hindered by the sign problem. The focus of the present work is on the further development of methods to study imbalanced systems in a fully nonperturbative fashion. We report our calculations of the ground-state energy of mass-imbalanced fermions using two different approaches which are also very popular in the context of the theory of the strong interaction (quantum chromodynamics, QCD): (a) the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm with imaginary mass imbalance, followed by an analytic continuation to the real axis; and (b) the complex Langevin algorithm. We cover a range of on-site interaction strengths that includes strongly attractive as well as strongly repulsive cases which we verify with nonperturbative renormalization group methods and perturbation theory. Our findings indicate that, for strong repulsive couplings, the energy starts to flatten out, implying interesting consequences for short-range and high-frequency correlation functions. Overall, our results clearly indicate that the complex Langevin approach is very versatile and works very well for imbalanced Fermi gases with both attractive and repulsive interactions.