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Physical Review A

Universal and Efimov trimers in an alkaline-earth-metal and alkali-metal gas mixture with spin-orbit coupling

Qing Ji, Ren Zhang, Wei Zhang

Published Dec 9, 2020• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We exactly solve the two-body and three-body problems in the mixture of alkaline-earth-metal(like) (AE) and alkali-metal atomic gases in the presence of three-dimensional isotropic spin-orbit (SO) coupling. The SO coupling is implemented by the Raman scheme that couples the ground state of the AE atom with different nuclear spin. The interaction between AE and alkali-metal atoms is tuned to be near resonant by Feshbach resonance, while the interaction between the two AE atoms is negligible. We present the Skorniakov--Ter-Martirosian (STM) equation for the three-body system composed of two SO coupled AE atoms and one alkali-metal atom. By solving the STM equation in the zero angular momentum sector, we obtain the energy spectrum and find a nonuniversal Efimov trimer and a universal Kartavtsev-Malykh (KM) trimer in different parameter windows of the mass ratio. In the region where the KM trimer is present, strong SO coupling can stabilize the KM trimer to be the ground state, such that experimental realization and observation can be expected.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.102.063313

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We exactly solve the two-body and three-body problems in the mixture of alkaline-earth-metal(like) (AE) and alkali-metal atomic gases in the presence of three-dimensional isotropic spin-orbit (SO) coupling. The SO coupling is implemented by the Raman scheme that couples the ground state of the AE atom with different nuclear spin. The interaction between AE and alkali-metal atoms is tuned to be near resonant by Feshbach resonance, while the interaction between the two AE atoms is negligible. We present the Skorniakov--Ter-Martirosian (STM) equation for the three-body system composed of two SO coupled AE atoms and one alkali-metal atom. By solving the STM equation in the zero angular momentum sector, we obtain the energy spectrum and find a nonuniversal Efimov trimer and a universal Kartavtsev-Malykh (KM) trimer in different parameter windows of the mass ratio. In the region where the KM trimer is present, strong SO coupling can stabilize the KM trimer to be the ground state, such that experimental realization and observation can be expected.
A recent experiment has observed Feshbach resonances between alkali and alkaline-earth-metal atoms. These Feshbach resonances are insensitive to the nuclear spin of alkaline-earth-metal atoms. Utilizing this feature, we propose to take this system as a candidate to perform quantum simulation of the Kondo effect. An alkali-metal atom can form a molecule with an alkaline-earth-metal atom with different nuclear spins, which plays the role of spin-exchange scattering responsible for the Kondo effect. Furthermore, we point out that the existence of three-body bound state and atom-molecule resonance due to the Efimov effect can enhance this spin-exchange scattering and therefore enhance the Kondo effect. We discuss this mechanism first with a three-body problem in free space and then demonstrate that the same mechanism still holds when the alkali-metal atom is localized by an external trap and becomes an impurity embedded in the alkaline-earth-metal atomic gases.
We study the two-body and three-body bound states in ultracold atomic mixtures with one of the atoms subjected to an isotropic spin-orbit (SO) coupling. We consider a system of two identical fermions interacting with one SO-coupled atom. It is found that there can exist two types of three-body bound states, Efimov trimers and universal trimers. The Efimov trimers are energetically less favored by the SO coupling, which will finally merge into the atom-dimer threshold as increasing the SO-coupling strength. Nevertheless, these trimers exhibit a discrete scaling law incorporating the SO-coupling effect. On the other hand, the universal trimers are more favored by the SO coupling. They can be induced at negative sss-wave scattering lengths and with smaller mass ratios than those without SO coupling. These results are obtained by both the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and exact solutions from three-body equations.
In this Letter we address the issue of how synthetic spin-orbit (SO) coupling can strongly affect three-body physics in ultracold atomic gases. We consider a system which consists of three fermionic atoms, including two spinless heavy atoms and one spin-1/2 light atom subjected to an isotropic SO coupling. We find that SO coupling can induce universal three-body bound states with a negative s-wave scattering length at a smaller mass ratio, where no trimer bound state can exist if in the absence of SO coupling. The energies of these trimers are independent of the high-energy cutoff, and therefore they are universal ones. Moreover, the resulting atom-dimer resonance can be effectively controlled by SO coupling strength. Our results can be applied to systems like a 6Li and 40K mixture.
For a mixture of alkali-earth atomic gas in the long-lived excited state ^{3}P_{0} and the ground state ^{1}S_{0}, in addition to nuclear spin, another "orbital" index is introduced to distinguish these two internal states. In this Letter we propose a mechanism to induce Feshbach resonance between two atoms with different orbital and nuclear spin quantum numbers. Two essential ingredients are the interorbital spin-exchange process and orbital dependence of the Landé g factors. Here the orbital degrees of freedom plays a similar role as the electron spin degree of freedom in magnetic Feshbach resonance in alkali-metal atoms. This resonance is particularly accessible for the ^{173}Yb system. The BCS-BEC crossover in this system requires two fermion pairing order parameters, and displays a significant difference compared to that in an alkali-metal system.
The Efimov states are three-body bound states, which appear universally when the s-wave scattering length between the particles is resonantly large.Since the Efimov states and their characteristic discrete scale invariance have recently been observed in ultracold atoms, the Efimov states and their associated few-body phenomena have attracted widening interest both theoretically and experimentally.In this thesis, I theoretically study the Efimov physics and related phenomena, focusing on the following three topics: (i) Universal three-body physics for a mass-imbalanced Fermi system (Chapter 3).For a system of two identical spinless (i.e., spin-polarized) fermions and one distinguishable particle which interact via a short-range potential with a large s-wave scattering length, two classes of universal three-body bound states have been known to appear in different regimes of the mass ratio: the Efimov trimers and the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers, which feature the discrete and continuous scale invariance, respectively.I have found the third class of universal three-body bound states, which I call the "crossover trimers".The crossover trimers show neither the discrete nor continuous scale invariance.I have identified the regions of these three classes of trimers as a function of the mass ratio and the s-wave scattering length, and shown that the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers and the Efimov trimers can continuously transform into each other via the crossover trimers as the mass ratio and the s-wave scattering length are varied.Owing to the presence of the crossover trimers, the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers dissociate into a particle and a dimer when the s-wave scattering length is varied, inducing resonances in the particle-dimer scattering.I have calculated the elastic particle-dimer scattering lengths in arbitrary angular-momentum channels, and shown that the particle-dimer resonances indeed occur.From the resonance positions, I have found accurate values of the critical mass ratios at which the Kartavtsev-Malykh trimers in the higher angular-momentum channels appear. (ii) Universal three-body parameter (Chapter 4).In the Efimov physics, the three-body parameter fixes the short-range three-body phase and hence the scale of the energy spectrum.Until quite recently, it has been widely held that the threebody parameter should depend on the short-range part of the inter-atomic potential, and hence vary almost randomly between different atomic species and hyperfine states.However, mounting evidence in recent experiments suggests otherwise.While some theoretical studies have succeeded in reproducing the universal behavior in the three-body parameter, the underlying physical mechanism has remained unclear and controversial.In this thesis, I elucidate the physical origin of the universal three-body parameter.I propose that a non-adiabatic deformation of the three-body wave function induced by a universal two-body correlation results in a universal three-body repulsion, which prevents three particles from coming close and renders the three-body parameter universal.This mechanism is verified by reproducing the universal three-body repulsion with a simple model wave function.The mechanism found here suggests that the three-body parameter would also be universal for non-van der Waals types of potentials.For various classes of deep two-body potentials, it is shown that the effective range is the relevant length scale to characterize the two-body correlation and sets the three-body parameter.Depending on the shape of the two-body correlation, there
We show that four heavy fermions interacting resonantly with a lighter atom (4+1 system) become Efimovian at mass ratio 13.279(2), which is smaller than the corresponding 2+1 and 3+1 thresholds. We thus predict the five-body Efimov effect for this system in the regime where any of its subsystem is non-Efimovian. For smaller mass ratios we show the existence and calculate the energy of a universal 4+1 pentamer state, which continues the series of the 2+1 trimer predicted by Kartavtsev and Malykh and 3+1 tetramer discovered by Blume. We also show that the effective-range correction for the light-heavy interaction has a strong effect on all these states and larger effective ranges increase their tendency to bind.