Quantum Liquids

Peter A. Egelstaff

Li He, Haowei Li, Wei Yi +1 more

Quantum liquid, in the form of a self-bound droplet, is stabilized by a subtle balance between the mean-field contribution and quantum fluctuations. While a liquid-gas transition is expected when such a balance is broken, it remains elusive whether liquid-gas critical points exist in the quantum regime. Here, we study the quantum criticality in a binary Bose mixture undergoing the liquid-gas transition. We show that, beyond a narrow stability window of the self-bound liquid, a liquid-gas coexistence persists, which eventually transits into a homogeneous mixture. Importantly, we identify two distinct critical points where the liquid-gas coexistence terminates. These critical points are characterized by rich critical behaviors in their vicinity, including divergent susceptibility, unique phonon-mode softening, and enhanced density correlations. The liquid-gas transition and the critical points can be readily explored in ultracold atoms confined to a box potential. Our work highlights the thermodynamic approach as a powerful tool in revealing the quantum liquid-gas criticality, and paves the way for further studies of critical phenomena in quantum liquids.

Yi Zhou, Xiao-Gang Wen

Motivated by experiments on Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$ samples, we studied and classified the symmetric spin liquids on triangular lattice. We identified 63 $Z_2$ spin liquids, 30 U(1) spin liquids and 2 SU(2) spin liquids. All those spin liquids have the same symmetry but different quantum orders. We calculated the spin spectral functions in some simple spin liquids and compared them to the one measured by experiments on Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$. We find that the $U1Cτ_{+}^0τ_{-}^0τ^1$ spin liquid or one of its relatives is consistent with observed properties of the spin liquid state in Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$. We discussed the fine distinctions among those possible spin liquids and the spin liquids proposed using slave-fermion approach, so that future experiments can determine which spin liquids actually describe the spin state in Cs$_2$CuCl$_4$.

Efrat Lifshitz, L.P. PITAEVSKI

E.M. LIFSHITZ, L.P. PITAEVSKI

Ya-Jie Wu, Jiang Zhou, Su-Peng Kou

We investigate the two dimensional generalized attractive Hubbard model in a bipartite lattice, and and a "quantum phase liquid" phase, in which the fermions are paired but don't have phase coherence at zero temperature, in analogy to quantum spin liquid phase. Then, two types of topological quantum phase liquids with a small external magnetic field-Z2 quantum phase liquids and chiral quantum phase liquids-are discussed.