We investigate the properties of a dilute gas of impurities embedded in an ultracold gas of bosons that forms a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). This work focuses mainly on the equation of state (EoS) of the impurity gas at zero temperature and the induced interaction between impurities mediated by the host bath. We use perturbative field-theory approaches, such as Hugenholtz–Pines formalism, in the weakly interacting regime. In turn, for strong interactions, we aim at non-perturbative techniques such as quantum–Monte Carlo (QMC) methods. Our findings agree with experimental observations for an ultra dilute gas of impurities, modeled in the framework of the single impurity problem; however, as the density of impurities increases, systematic deviations are displayed with respect to the one-body Bose polaron problem.
We investigate the properties of a dilute gas of impurities embedded in an ultracold gas of bosons that forms a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). This work focuses mainly on the equation of state (EoS) of the impurity gas at zero temperature and the induced interaction between impurities mediated by the host bath. We use perturbative field-theory approaches, such as Hugenholtz–Pines formalism, in the weakly interacting regime. In turn, for strong interactions, we aim at non-perturbative techniques such as quantum–Monte Carlo (QMC) methods. Our findings agree with experimental observations for an ultra dilute gas of impurities, modeled in the framework of the single impurity problem; however, as the density of impurities increases, systematic deviations are displayed with respect to the one-body Bose polaron problem.
This review describes the field of Bose polarons, arising when mobile impurities are immersed into a bosonic quantum gas. The latter can be realized by a Bose-Einstein condensate of ultracold atoms, or of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor, which has led to a series of experimental observations of Bose polarons near inter-species Feshbach resonances that we survey. Following an introduction to the topic, with references to its historic roots and a presentation of the Bose polaron Hamiltonian, we summarize state-of-the-art experiments. Next we provide a detailed discussion of polaron models, starting from the ubiquitous Fröhlich Hamiltonian that applies at weak couplings. Already this highly simplified model allows insights into ultra-violet divergencies, logarithmic and power-law, that need to be properly regularized. To capture the physics near a Feshbach resonance, two-phonon scattering terms on the impurity as well as phonon-phonon interactions need to be included. We proceed by a survey of concurrent theoretical methods used for solving strongly interacting Bose polaron problems, ranging from Lee-Low-Pines mean-field theory, Chevy-ansatz, Gross-Pitaevskii-equation to diagrammatic Monte Carlo approaches. The subsequent sections are devoted to the large bodies of work investigating strong coupling Bose polarons, including detailed comparisons with radio-frequency spectra obtained in ultracold atom experiments; to investigations of universal few-body and Efimov states associated with a Feshbach resonance in atomic mixtures; to studies of quantum dynamics and polarons out of equilibrium; Bose polarons in low-dimensional 1D and 2D quantum systems; induced interactions among polarons and bipolaron formation; and to Bose polarons at non-zero temperatures. We end our review by detailed discussions of closely related experimental setups and systems, including ionic impurities, systems with strong light-matter interactions, and variations and extensions of the Bose polaron concepts e.g. to baths with topological order or strong interactions relevant for correlated electrons. Finally, an outlook is presented, highlighting possible future research directions and open questions in the field as a whole.
In this thesis we investigate the properties of impurities immersed in a dilute Bose gas at zero temperature using quantum Monte-Carlo methods. The interactions between bosons are modeled by a hard sphere potential with scattering length a, whereas the interactions between the impurity and the bosons are modeled by a short-range, square-well potential where both the sign and the strength of the scattering length b can be varied by adjusting the well depth. We calculate the binding energy, the effective mass and the pair correlation functions of a impurity along the attractive and the repulsive polaron branch. In particular, at the unitary limit of the impurity-bosons interaction, we find that the binding energy is much larger than the chemical potential of the bath signaling that many bosons dress the impurity thereby lowering its energy and increasing its effective mass. We characterize this state by calculating the bosons-boson pair correlation function and by investigating the dependence of the binding energy on the gas parameter of the bosonic bath. We also investigate the ground-state properties of M impurities in a Bose gas at T=0. In particular, the energy and the phase diagram by using both quantum Monte-Carlo and mean field methods.
We investigate the properties of an impurity immersed in a dilute Bose gas at zero temperature using quantum Monte Carlo methods. The interactions between bosons are modeled by a hard-sphere potential with scattering length a, whereas the interactions between the impurity and the bosons are modeled by a short-range, square-well potential where both the sign and the strength of the scattering length b can be varied by adjusting the well depth. We characterize the attractive and the repulsive polaron branch by calculating the binding energy and the effective mass of the impurity. Furthermore, we investigate the structural properties of the bath, such as the impurity-boson contact parameter and the change of the density profile around the impurity. At the unitary limit of the impurity-boson interaction, we find that the effective mass of the impurity remains smaller than twice its bare mass, while the binding energy scales with ${\ensuremath{\hbar}}^{2}{n}^{2/3}/m$, where n is the density of the bath and m is the common mass of the impurity and the bosons in the bath. The implications for the phase diagram of binary Bose-Bose mixtures at low concentrations are also discussed.
This review describes the field of Bose polarons, arising when mobile impurities are immersed into a bosonic quantum gas. The latter can be realized by a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of ultracold atoms, or of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor, which has led to a series of experimental observations of Bose polarons near inter-species Feshbach resonances that we survey. Following an introduction to the topic, with references to its historic roots and a presentation of the Bose polaron Hamiltonian, we summarize state-of-the-art experiments. Next we provide a detailed discussion of polaron models, starting from the ubiquitous Fröhlich Hamiltonian that applies at weak couplings. We proceed by a survey of concurrent theoretical methods used for solving strongly interacting Bose polaron problems. The subsequent sections are devoted to the large bodies of work investigating strong coupling Bose polarons, including detailed comparisons with radio-frequency (RF) spectra obtained in ultracold atom experiments; to investigations of universal few-body and Efimov states associated with a Feshbach resonance in atomic mixtures; to studies of quantum dynamics and polarons out of equilibrium; Bose polarons in low-dimensional; induced interactions among polarons and bipolaron formation; and to Bose polarons at non-zero temperatures. We end our review by detailed discussions of closely related experimental setups and systems, including ionic impurities, systems with strong light-matter interactions, and variations and extensions of the Bose polaron concepts e.g. to baths with topological order or strong interactions relevant for correlated electrons. Finally, an outlook is presented, highlighting possible future research directions and open questions in the field as a whole.
Bose polarons, quasiparticles composed of mobile impurities surrounded by cold Bose gas, can experience strong interactions mediated by the many-body environment and form bipolaron bound states. Here we present a detailed study of heavy polarons in a one-dimensional Bose gas by formulating a nonperturbative theory and complementing it with exact numerical simulations. We develop an analytic approach for weak boson-boson interactions and arbitrarily strong impurity-boson couplings. Our approach is based on a mean-field theory that accounts for deformations of the superfluid by the impurities and in this way minimizes quantum fluctuations. The mean-field equations are solved exactly in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, leading to an analytic expression for the interaction potential of heavy polarons, which is found to be in excellent agreement with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results. In the strong coupling limit, the potential substantially deviates from the exponential form valid for weak coupling and has a linear shape at short distances. Taking into account the leading-order Born-Huang corrections, we calculate bipolaron binding energies for impurity-boson mass ratios as low as 3 and find excellent agreement with QMC results.
Bose-Einstein condensation is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon where cooling down a gas of bosonic particles to ultracold temperatures results in the macroscopic occupation of the lowest energy state. This new state of matter has been used as a quantum simulator of many-body phenomena and theories due to its extreme tunability and controllability. An important example of such a many-body system is the polaron which, in its most general form, describes an impurity interacting with a bosonic bath. In the case of ultracold Bose gases, the impurity interacts with and is dressed by the Bogoliubov excitations of the gas. A supersolid is a state of matter that exhibits both superfluidity and crystalline order, which are seemingly irreconcilable properties. It has recently been observed in dipolar ultracold Bose gases, where it arises from the long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, and also other systems. The breaking of both translational symmetry and gauge symmetry results in multiple excitation modes in the supersolid. In this thesis, the charged Bose polaron and an impurity in a dipolar ultracold Bose gas exhibiting supersolidity (the supersolid Bose polaron) are studied. The ground-state properties of the charged Bose polaron are discussed using a variational path-integral approach. Absorption spectroscopy is proposed as a probe of the charged Bose polaron, and the optical response is studied for weak impurity-boson interactions. Next, the one-dimensional dipolar supersolid Bose polaron is investigated where multiple approaches are used for the derivation of the ground-state properties. The study of the polaron problem with a supersolid background is of particular interest because of the rich excitation spectrum of the supersolid. Interesting phenomena, such as possible localization of the polaron to a single droplet for strong interactions, are observed. The absorption spectrum of a charged impurity in the supersolid is also derived, which, because of the different excitation modes of the supersolid, shows multiple peaks from which information such as the superfluid fraction may be obtained.