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Analog Simulation of Weyl Particles with Cold Atoms

Daniel Suchet, Mihail Rabinovic, Reimann, Thomas, Kretzschmar, Norman, Franz Sievers, Christophe Salomon, Johnathan Lau, Olga Goulko, Lobo, Carlos, Frédéric Chevy

Published May 18, 2016• 5 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We study theoretically, numerically, and experimentally the relaxation of a collisionless gas in a quadrupole trap after a momentum kick. The non-separability of the potential enables a quasi thermalization of the single particle distribution function even in the absence of interactions. Suprinsingly, the dynamics features an effective decoupling between the strong trapping axis and the weak trapping plane. The energy delivered during the kick is redistributed according to the symmetries of the system and satisfies the Virial theorem, allowing for the prediction of the final temperatures. We show that this behaviour is formally equivalent to the relaxation of massless relativistic Weyl fermions after a sudden displacement from the center of a harmonic trap.

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arXiv:1907.06711•Condensed Matter•Aug 8, 2019•4 citations
We study theoretically, numerically, and experimentally the relaxation of a collisionless gas in a quadrupole trap after a momentum kick. The non-separability of the potential enables a quasi thermalization of the single particle distribution function even in the absence of interactions. Suprinsingly, the dynamics features an effective decoupling between the strong trapping axis and the weak trapping plane. The energy delivered during the kick is redistributed according to the symmetries of the system and satisfies the Virial theorem, allowing for the prediction of the final temperatures. We show that this behaviour is formally equivalent to the relaxation of massless relativistic Weyl fermions after a sudden displacement from the center of a harmonic trap.
We analyze several puzzling features of a recent experiment with a noninteracting gas of atoms in a quadrupole trap. After an initial momentum kick, the system reaches a stationary, quasithermal state even without collisions, due to the dephasing of individual particle trajectories. Surprisingly, the momentum distribution remains anisotropic at long times, characterized by different temperatures along the different directions. In particular, there is no transfer of the kick energy between the axial and radial trap directions. To understand these effects we discuss and solve two closely related models: a spherically symmetric trap $V(r)\ensuremath{\simeq}{r}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ and a strongly confined gas along one direction (a pancake trap). We find that in the isotropic trap, the gas unexpectedly also preserves the anisotropy of the kick at long times, which we are able to explain using the conservation of angular momentum and the virial theorem. Depending on the value of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ we find that the kick can cool or heat the orthogonal directions. The pancake trap case is quantitatively similar to the quadrupole one. We show that for the former, the temperature anisotropy and memory of the kick direction are due to the change in the two-dimensional effective potential resulting from the kick, thereby also explaining the quadrupole experimental results.
We present a theoretical study of the dynamical behavior of a gas made of ultracold fermionic atoms, which during their motions can collide with a much smaller number of thermal bosonic impurities. The atoms are confined inside harmonic traps and the interactions between the two species are treated as due to sss-wave scattering with a negative scattering length modeling the $^{40}\mathrm{K}\penalty1000-\hskip0pt^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ fermion-boson system. We set the fermions into motion by giving a small shift to their trap center and examine two alternative types of initial conditions, referring to (i) a close-to-equilibrium situation in which the two species are at the same temperature (well below the Fermi temperature and well above the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature); and (ii) a far-from-equilibrium case in which the impurities are given a Boltzmann distribution of momenta while the fermions are at very low temperatures. The dynamics of the gas is evaluated by the numerical solution of the Vlasov-Landau equations for the one-body distribution functions, supported by some analytical results on the collisional properties of a fermion gas. We find that the trapped gaseous mixture is close to the collisionless regime for values of the parameters corresponding to current experiments, but can be driven towards a collisional regime even without increasing the strength of the interactions, either by going over to heavier impurity masses or by matching the width of the momentum distribution of the impurities to the Fermi momentum of the fermion gas.
We study the collective excitations of polarized single-component quasi-two-dimensional dipolar fermions in an isotropic harmonic trap by solving the collisional Boltzmann-Vlasov (CBV) equation via the method of moments. We study the response to monopole and quadrupole perturbations of the trap potential and investigate the dynamical character of excitations in each case. Simple analytic formulas are found using the linearized scaling ansatz approximation and accurate numerical results are obtained by satisfying the first eight moments of the CBV equation. Except for the lowest-lying monopole mode that is weakly affected by collisions, the quadrupole and the higher-order monopole modes undergo a transition from the collisionless regime to a dissipative crossover regime and finally approach the hydrodynamic regime upon increasing the dipolar interaction strength. For strong transverse confinement (2D limit), we predict the existence of a temperature window within which the characteristics of the collective modes become temperature independent. This plateau, which is a direct consequence of dipole-dipole scatterings, persists as long as the scattering energies remain in the near-threshold regime. The predictions of this work are expected to be observable in the current experiments.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of an impurity in a harmonic trap that is kicked with a well-defined quasi-momentum, and interacts with a bath of free fermions or interacting bosons in a one-dimensional lattice configuration. Using numerical and analytical techniques we investigate the full dynamics beyond linear response, which allows us to quantitatively characterize states of the impurity in the bath for different parameter regimes. These vary from a tightly bound molecular state in a strongly interacting limit to a polaron (dressed impurity) and a free particle for weak interactions, with composite behaviour in the intermediate regime. These dynamics and different parameter regimes should be readily realizable in systems of cold atoms in optical lattices.
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of an impurity in a harmonic trap that is kicked with a well-defined quasi-momentum, and interacts with a bath of free fermions or interacting bosons in a one-dimensional lattice configuration. Using numerical and analytical techniques we investigate the full dynamics beyond linear response, which allows us to quantitatively characterize states of the impurity in the bath for different parameter regimes. These vary from a tightly bound molecular state in a strongly interacting limit to a polaron (dressed impurity) and a free particle for weak interactions, with composite behaviour in the intermediate regime. These dynamics and different parameter regimes should be readily realizable in systems of cold atoms in optical lattices.
We study numerically the problem of dynamical thermalization of interacting cold fermionic atoms placed in an isolated Sinai oscillator trap. This system is characterized by a quantum chaos regime for one-particle dynamics. We show that, for a many-body system of cold atoms, the interactions, with a strength above a certain quantum chaos border given by the Åberg criterion, lead to the Fermi–Dirac distribution and relaxation of many-body initial states to the thermalized state in the absence of any contact with a thermostate. We discuss the properties of this dynamical thermalization and its links with the Loschmidt–Boltzmann dispute.