This dissertation deals with finite-size effects in a few different quantum many-body phenomena in ultracold atomic systems. The finite-sized systems were simulated numerically using both mean-field methods and methods beyond mean-field, e.g. quadratic configuration interaction and exact diagonalization. The thesis is based on five scientific papers:Paper I is about the finite-size effects in the dynamics of a few-body soliton-like state. The collapses and revivals of the solitary wavefront in the particle density is characterized both analytically and numerically in the limit of weak interactions.Paper II analyzes a scheme to renormalize the contact interaction when used for exact diagonalization in a two-dimensional space. By relating the coupling strength in the diagonalization using the two-particle system, for which regularized solutions exists, converged results are obtained.Paper III deals with the formation of quantized vortices when stirring a harmonically trapped finite-sized system with a quadrupole deformation. I the energy spectrum the avoided crossing is found to be described by either of two types of correlated states. The type of avoided crossing can be controlled by the inclusion of an extra quartic deformation. Hysteresis in the mean-field description is found to be related to the types of avoided crossings exhibited and the full many-body time-evolution is compared to mean-field results. Paper IV investigates vortices in rotating fermionic droplets with dipole-dipole interactions. The vortex structure is found to still be present after the interaction is made anisotropic by having the dipoles tilt. Paper V contains an investigation of the effects on shell structure in fermionic droplets with dipole-dipole interactions. For a anisotropic harmonic oscillator, by tilting the dipoles, the shell structure of an isotropic oscillator can be restored.
This dissertation deals with finite-size effects in a few different quantum many-body phenomena in ultracold atomic systems. The finite-sized systems were simulated numerically using both mean-field methods and methods beyond mean-field, e.g. quadratic configuration interaction and exact diagonalization. The thesis is based on five scientific papers:Paper I is about the finite-size effects in the dynamics of a few-body soliton-like state. The collapses and revivals of the solitary wavefront in the particle density is characterized both analytically and numerically in the limit of weak interactions.Paper II analyzes a scheme to renormalize the contact interaction when used for exact diagonalization in a two-dimensional space. By relating the coupling strength in the diagonalization using the two-particle system, for which regularized solutions exists, converged results are obtained.Paper III deals with the formation of quantized vortices when stirring a harmonically trapped finite-sized system with a quadrupole deformation. I the energy spectrum the avoided crossing is found to be described by either of two types of correlated states. The type of avoided crossing can be controlled by the inclusion of an extra quartic deformation. Hysteresis in the mean-field description is found to be related to the types of avoided crossings exhibited and the full many-body time-evolution is compared to mean-field results. Paper IV investigates vortices in rotating fermionic droplets with dipole-dipole interactions. The vortex structure is found to still be present after the interaction is made anisotropic by having the dipoles tilt. Paper V contains an investigation of the effects on shell structure in fermionic droplets with dipole-dipole interactions. For a anisotropic harmonic oscillator, by tilting the dipoles, the shell structure of an isotropic oscillator can be restored.
This dissertation, based on six included papers, theoretically investigates properties of quantum few-particle systems. An overview of related experimental research - ultra-cold trapped dilute gases, and electrons in quantum dots - is given, followed by a description of some of the studied many-particle phenomena - Bose-Einstein condensation, quantized vortices, Wigner localization and the Tonks-Girardeau gas. As the research results are presented in the included papers, a main part of the text in this thesis sets focus on methodology. Most of the papers involve use of the configuration interaction method, a numerical method which can give approximative eigenvalues and eigenstates of a few-particle Hamiltonian. The research has also involved further development of this method, by use of the Lee-Suzuki approximation. Formal descriptions of the methods are presented, together with a discussion about the numerical implementation. Explicit examples are given in an appendix. Papers I and II investigate properties of a rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensate, in particular emerging vortex structures and associated wavefunctions. Paper III demonstrates that the Lee-Suzuki approximation, initially developed in the field of nuclear structure theory, can be useful to describe short-range particle-particle correlations in a trapped bosonic gas. Paper IV investigates the possibility to observe Wigner localization in a nanowire quantum dot, and compares predicted electron transport properties with experimental measurements. Paper V analyzes structures of ultra-cold atoms or molecules with dipolar interactions, in a quasi-one-dimensional trap. Paper VI also considers cold atoms or molecules with dipolar interactions, but in a quasi-two-dimensional setup, with a focus on the resulting Wigner states' dependence on the anisotropy of the interaction.
In this thesis we study the effects of the dipole-dipole interaction on the physics of ultracold quantum gases, both bosonic and fermionic, within the theoretical framework provided by the mean-field regime. This kind of interaction takes place in ultracold atomic gases (for instance 52Cr or 164Dy) due to their atomic magnetic dipole moment, and in ultracold molecular gases due to the magnetic or electric dipole moment. \n \nIn the case of quantum gases of bosonic atoms, or Bose-Einstein condensates, the dipole-dipole interaction can be studied within mean-field approximation using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, which now contains a new non-linear term due to the dipole-dipole interaction. We investigate, on the one hand dipolar condensates confined in harmonic traps, and on the other dipolar condensates confined in toroidal traps. In the harmonic geometry, our focus is on the study of the ground state and the quantized vortex state, where the density profile is characterized as well as some properties leading to the process of vortex formation, such as the critical frequency and the energy barrier that has to be overcome to bring the vortex from the surface to the centre of the gas. We finish the study of dipolar condensates in harmonic traps by dynamically simulating the precession frequency of an off-center vortex in a non-rotating condensate. \n \nIn the toroidal geometry the dipolar effects are strongly magnified when the polarization axis of the dipoles is perpendicular to the trap symmetry axis. In this case, the anisotropic structure of the density can be understood as the response of the system to the double-well effective potential along the ring. We have studied the dynamics of this system when the initial number of atoms in the left and right wells is imbalanced, predicting Josephson and self-trapping oscillations depending on the initial condition. This has led us to name this new system as Self-induced Josephson Junction. We have studied in detail the self-trapping regime and we have seen that the particle flux inversion is closely related to the crossing of vortices across the Josephson junctions. This result opens the door to establishing a more direct connection between the phase-slip regime, widely addressed in superfluid helium, and the self-trapping regime of condensates. \n \nIn the case of quantum gases of fermionic dipolar particles, we have studied how the radial quadrupole mode allows one to distinguish between hydrodynamic and collisionless regimes. We have analytically calculated the frequency of this mode in the mean-field approximation, generalizing the results from the Thomas-Fermi approximation for trapped ideal Fermi gases. On the one hand, we observe that the frequency in the hydrodynamic regime is smaller than in non-dipolar Fermi gases, while in the collisionless regime the frequency is larger or smaller than that corresponding to the non-interacting system depending on the geometry of the harmonic trap. On the other hand, we predict that reducing the trap deformation (aspect ratio) an observable jump in the frequency of the radial quadrupole mode would take place, which would correspond to the transition between the collisionless and hydrodynamic regimes, for instance when the gas undergoes the transition to the superfluid state.
This dissertation investigates properties of two-dimensional many-body systems. Studies are performed using the Spin-Density Functional Theory with the Local Spin-Density Approximation, and numerical exact diagonalization. The properties studied include symmetry-breaking states in few-electron quantum dots, gaps in confined few-body systems, magnetic properties of cold fermionic atoms in optical lattices, and vortex formation in few-body systems. The dissertation also studies the properties of the SDFT-LSDA method for many-body calculations itself. The dissertation comprises five original papers, which are presented following an introduction to the fields of research, and the methods used, and the systems studied. Paper I investigates symmetry-breaking states in quantum dots, and the reliability of SDFT-LSDA for such systems. It is found that SDFT-LSDA may introduce artificial energy splittings between the members of a degenerate spin multiplet in the ground state. Paper II investigates the reliability of SDFT-LSDA when used to calculate gaps, and addition and removal energies in few-body systems. It is found that, contrary to studies of atoms and bilk solids, Kohn-Sham eigenvalues can be used to calculate addition and removal energies in parabolically confined systems. Also, in Paper II, van der Waals blockade is predicted to occur in systems of cold atoms, in analogy to Coulomb blockade in electronic systems. In Papers III and IV, mean-field theory is used to study the magnetic properties of cold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice. The results are compared with a similar study for quantum-dot lattices. It is found that there is a rich magnetic phase diagram, with non-magnetic, ferromagnetic, and anti-ferromagnetic states. The phase diagram of the optical lattice is found to be very similar to the phase diagram of the quantum-dot lattice. Paper V uses exact diagonalization to study vortex formation in rotating few-body quantum systems. Systems consisting of Coulomb-interacting fermions (electrons), Coulomb-interacting bosons, and bosons with a short-range interaction are studied. It is found that vortex formation in these systems has universal properties.
Ultracold atomic systems have been of great theoretical and experimental interest in the past few decades.They provide ideal paradigms to study quantum phenomena, simulate condensed matter systems, and could potentially become a platform for quantum computations.This thesis focuses on the theoretical investigation of universal and non-universal properties of ultracold few-atom systems.The goal of this thesis is to answer or provide insights into several interesting open questions.First, what is the role of the non-universal three-body parameter in weakly-interacting harmonically trapped Bose gases and at which order does it kick in?Second, how large is the ground state energy of small two-component Fermi gases with infinitely strong interactions compared to their non-interacting counterparts?Lastly, what is the interplay between the spin-orbit coupling and the s-wave two-body interaction and how does it affect the energy spectrum of the two-atom system?In order to answer these questions, we develop and employ different analytical and numerical techniques.A perturbative effective field theory treatment to study the weaklyinteracting trapped Bose gas is employed.The treatment is extended to up to fourth-order perturbation theory and techniques to regularize the diverging sums are developed.A logarithmic divergence in the three-body sector is identified and the need for a non-universal three-body parameter is shown.v The explicitly correlated Gaussian method is used to calculate the ground state energy of small trapped two-component Fermi gases with up to ten particles.A code is developed from scratch and parallelized.An improved optimization scheme is developed.A novel technique to remove the finite-range dependence is proposed and tested.Our calculations serve as benchmarks for other numerical techniques.The explicitly correlated Gaussian method is extended to treat systems with periodic boundary conditions for the first time.Standard perturbation theory is used to treat the spin-orbit coupling term in trapped two-atom systems.Our treatment is based on the exact two-body zero-range solution in the trap.The interplay between the spin-orbit coupling and the two-body s-wave interaction is investigated and shown to have a great impact on the energy spectrum for certain parameter combinations.
Bose-Einstein condensation(BEC) has been a research hotspot in cold atom physics for the past few decades. Recently, experiments on BECs have reported the observation of liquid-like quantum droplets, attracting significant interest. The physics for forming quantum droplets can be explained by zero-point quantum fluctuation which effectively prohibit the collapse caused by the mean-field interactions between the atoms. The stabilization mechanism beyond the mean-field theory, induced by quantum fluctuations, can be described by the Lee–Huang–Yang(LHY) correction. Normally, forming stable 2D or 3D solitons in free space is a challenging problem. Additionally, an intriguing question is how to generate 2D or 3D solitons with embedded vorticity. The LHY stability mechanism offers a new approach to producing stable solitons and vortex solitons in BECs. In this thesis, two-dimensional vortex quantum droplets in Bose-Einstein condensates, including those with and without external potential, are examined. The study of solitons and vortex solitons in BECs under mean-field interactions and external potential has yielded significant results. This thesis expands this field by introducing the LHY correction to study stable quantum droplets and vortex droplets in BECs. The work chapters begin with studying binary quantum droplets in free space, considering the case where interspecies interactions are weakly attractive and intraspecies interactions are weakly repulsive. The zero-vorticity, semi-vortex, and binary vortex quantum droplets are studied in Chapter 3. Stable semi-vortex quantum droplets with embedded vorticity up to 8 are found in this system. This result gives a way to form stable vortex droplets with high topological charges in free space by controlling one component with zero vorticity and the other component with embedded vorticity. The stability and properties of these droplets are systematically studied. Chapter 4 explores the vortex quantum droplets and hidden vortex droplets confined within a radial lattice trap. It is found that the existence curves of the droplets confined within this optical trap could violate the Vakhitov-Kolokolov(VK) criterion, which is a necessary condition to form a stable soliton. A remarkable finding is that the vortex and hidden vortex quantum droplets in this radial lattice remain stable when they carry the embedded vorticity up to 11. The double-ring vortex and hidden vortex quantum droplets confined within this radial lattice are also discussed. The work expands from non-magnetic atoms to magnetic atoms in Chapter 5, which needs to consider the dipole-dipole interactions(DDIs). The anisotropic dipolar vortex quantum droplets trapped in an annular potential are studied. Under the effect of the ring shape potential, the double peak ring-shaped vortex droplets remain stable when they carry the embedded vorticity up to 11. It is the first time stable droplets with high topological charges have been formed in a dipolar system. Additionally, the shape transformation of dipolar vortex droplets induced by the strength of the mean-field interaction is examined. Finally, the behavior of dipolar vortex droplets confined within a weak-depth annular potential is also discussed. The results of this thesis may prove highly useful in creating stable vortex quantum droplets in Bose-Einstein condensates and advancing the broader field of ultracold atoms.
In this thesis, we study the physical properties of several ultracold few-boson systems depending on the interactions between their constituents. Nowadays, experimentally, it is possible to have great control with high precision over the geometry and the interactions between the particles, making them an excellent setup to test directly the principles of quantum mechanics. A very interesting point is to study the evolution of their properties with the number of particles. The theoretical study of these systems pretends to microscopically understand the current experimental results and give support to new experimental developments.\n\n\t\t\t\t The method that will be used is the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the system. As we will see, in spite of the attempts to improve it, the method is limited by the fact that, in practice, it is only useful to study few-particle systems. The method has several advantages. First of all, one has access to both the ground and the excited states. In second place, the method is variational and converges to the exact solution as long as the Hilbert space in which we diagonalize is enlarged.\n\t\t\t\t Moreover, since we have access to the states of the system, it is possible to calculate any observable quantity of interest.\n\n\t\t\t\t First, we will study a system of spinless bosons trapped in a two-dimensional harmonic potential. The effect of the trap is to keep the system bound. It will be seen how the presence of a repulsive interaction changes the energy spectrum and other properties of the system. For instance, the density profile, which is usually measurable, and also the two-body distribution function, which is intimately related to the existence of correlations.\n\n\t\t\t\t Afterwards, the focus will be on the particular case of having only two bosons in the system interacting through a strong repulsive force. Inspired by the one-dimensional case where the fermionization phenomenon takes place in the strongly-interacting limit, we will study whether in two dimensions there is a resembling reminiscent effect. In other words, we will analyze if there are properties of the two strongly-interacting bosons in two dimensions that are like the ones of two noninteracting fermions.\n\n\t\t\t\t After that, we will tackle the localization phenomenon in a one-dimensional system that is caused by an external speckle potential that introduces disorder in the system. We will show that the localization is a robust phenomenon against repulsive contact interactions.\n\n\t\t\t\t Finally, we will study the influence of the spin-orbit coupling in a system of bosons with two possible pseudospin components, associated, for instance, to two hyperfine levels, confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. We will present an exhaustive analysis of the combined effects of the interaction and the spin-orbit coupling in the spectrum and the properties of the system. In particular we show the existence of a crossover in the ground state of the system susceptible to be experimentally identified.