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Communications Physics

Neural-network quantum states for ultra-cold Fermi gases

Jane Kim, Gabriel Pescia, Bryce Fore, Jannes Nys, Giuseppe Carleo, Stefano Gandolfi, Morten Hjorth-Jensen, Alessandro Lovato

Published May 8, 2024• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Ultra-cold Fermi gases exhibit a rich array of quantum mechanical properties, including the transition from a fermionic superfluid Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state to a bosonic superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). While these properties can be precisely probed experimentally, accurately describing them poses significant theoretical challenges due to strong pairing correlations and the non-perturbative nature of particle interactions. In this work, we introduce a Pfaffian-Jastrow neural-network quantum state featuring a message-passing architecture to efficiently capture pairing and backflow correlations. We benchmark our approach on existing Slater-Jastrow frameworks and state-of-the-art diffusion Monte Carlo methods, demonstrating a performance advantage and the scalability of our scheme. We show that transfer learning stabilizes the training process in the presence of strong, short-ranged interactions, and allows for an effective exploration of the BCS-BEC crossover region. Our findings highlight the potential of neural-network quantum states as a promising strategy for investigating ultra-cold Fermi gases.

DOI
10.1038/s42005-024-01613-w

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Abstract Ultra-cold Fermi gases exhibit a rich array of quantum mechanical properties, including the transition from a fermionic superfluid Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state to a bosonic superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). While these properties can be precisely probed experimentally, accurately describing them poses significant theoretical challenges due to strong pairing correlations and the non-perturbative nature of particle interactions. In this work, we introduce a Pfaffian-Jastrow neural-network quantum state featuring a message-passing architecture to efficiently capture pairing and backflow correlations. We benchmark our approach on existing Slater-Jastrow frameworks and state-of-the-art diffusion Monte Carlo methods, demonstrating a performance advantage and the scalability of our scheme. We show that transfer learning stabilizes the training process in the presence of strong, short-ranged interactions, and allows for an effective exploration of the BCS-BEC crossover region. Our findings highlight the potential of neural-network quantum states as a promising strategy for investigating ultra-cold Fermi gases.
Ultra-cold Fermi gases display diverse quantum mechanical properties, including the transition from a fermionic superfluid BCS state to a bosonic superfluid BEC state, which can be probed experimentally with high precision. However, the theoretical description of these properties is challenging due to the onset of strong pairing correlations and the non-perturbative nature of the interaction among the constituent particles. This work introduces a novel Pfaffian-Jastrow neural-network quantum state that includes backflow transformation based on message-passing architecture to efficiently encode pairing, and other quantum mechanical correlations. Our approach offers substantial improvements over comparable ansätze constructed within the Slater-Jastrow framework and outperforms state-of-the-art diffusion Monte Carlo methods, as indicated by our lower ground-state energies. We observe the emergence of strong pairing correlations through the opposite-spin pair distribution functions. Moreover, we demonstrate that transfer learning stabilizes and accelerates the training of the neural-network wave function, enabling the exploration of the BCS-BEC crossover region near unitarity. Our findings suggest that neural-network quantum states provide a promising strategy for studying ultra-cold Fermi gases.
Ultracold atomic gases are a powerful tool to experimentally study strongly correlated quantum many-body systems. In particular, ultracold Fermi gases with tunable interactions have allowed to realize the famous BEC-BCS crossover from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid of weakly bound Cooper pairs. However, large parts of the excitation spectrum of fermionic superfluids in the BEC-BCS crossover are still unexplored. In this work, we use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the full momentum-resolved low-energy excitation spectrum of strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gases. This enables us to directly observe the smooth transformation from a bosonic to a fermionic superfluid that takes place in the BEC-BCS crossover. We also use our spectra to determine the evolution of the superfluid gap and find excellent agreement with previous experiments and self-consistent T-matrix calculations both in the BEC and crossover regime. However, toward the BCS regime a calculation that includes the effects of particle-hole correlations shows better agreement with our data.
We report results of quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the ground state of dilute Fermi gases with attractive short-range two-body interactions. The strength of the interaction is varied to study different pairing regimes which are characterized by the product of the sss-wave scattering length and the Fermi wave vector, akFa{k}_{F}akF​. We report results for the ground-state energy, the pairing gap $\ensuremath{\Delta}$, and the quasiparticle spectrum. In the weak-coupling regime, $1∕a{k}_{F}<\ensuremath{-}1$, we obtain Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid and the energy gap $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ is much smaller than the Fermi gas energy EFG{E}_{\mathrm{FG}}EFG​. When a>0a>0a>0, the interaction is strong enough to form bound molecules with energy Emol{E}_{\mathrm{mol}}Emol​. For $1∕a{k}_{F}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}0.5$, we find that weakly interacting composite bosons are formed in the superfluid gas with $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ and gas energy per particle approaching $\ensuremath{\mid}{E}_{\mathrm{mol}}\ensuremath{\mid}∕2$. In this region, we seem to have Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of molecules. The behavior of the energy and the gap in the BCS-to-BEC transition region, $\ensuremath{-}0.5<1∕a{k}_{F}<0.5$, is discussed.
This work studies zero-temperature Fermi gases with short-ranged and attractive interactions with focus on the dimensionality aspects by confining the system from three to two dimensions. Interacting Fermi gases are superfluids characterized as being strongly correlated if the scattering length is much larger than the other scales present. In the many-body context, this category of systems requires a careful treatment since mean-field approaches are not expected to hold under the conditions which define the strong pairing. For this reason, we employ quantum Monte Carlo methods to study the dimensionality effects in two-component Fermi gases in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein condensate (BCS-BEC) crossover. To be able to investigate such aspects, we consider a three-dimensional gas with periodic boundary conditions in the xy plane and a confining potential in the z direction capable of reducing the dimensionality of the system, which defines a dimensional BCS-BEC crossover. We calculate the equation of state as the energy per particle as a function of the dimensionality and as a function of the interaction parameter, which are characterized by the oscillator length in the z direction and the scattering length respectively. The greater confinement in the system lowers the interparticle distances, which increases the effects of the attractive interactions between antiparallel-spin fermions.We also calculate the density profile in the z direction over the crossover for different confinements and different interaction parameters to quantify their influence on the spatial distribution of the particles. This study connects the perspectives between theoretical and experimental works in low-dimensional ultracold Fermi gases by utilizing an approach that is similar to what it is realized in modern experiments.
This study presents a simple idea and a conceptual understandingof the crossover from the Bardeen Cooper (BCS) state of weakly-correlatedpairs of fermions to the Bose{Einstein condensation (BEC) of diatomicmolecules in the atomic Fermi gas. In the context of ultra cold Fermi gases,a BCS-BEC crossover means that by tuning the interaction strength, onegoes from a BCS state to a BEC state without encountering a phase transition.BEC state is a Bose-Einstein condensate of two-atom molecules (boundfermions), while the BCS state is made up of pair of atoms. The differencebetween the pairs and the molecules is that the molecules are localized inthe real space, whereas the BCS pairs are made of two particles with oppositemomenta in the momentum space.
The crossover from weak-coupling Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) pairing to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of tightly bound pairs, as a function of the attractive interaction in Fermi systems, has long been of interest to theoretical physicists. The past decade has seen a series of remarkable experimental developments in ultracold Fermi gases that have realized the BCS-BEC crossover in the laboratory, bringing with it fresh new insights into the very strongly interacting unitary regime in the middle of this crossover. In this review, we start with a pedagogical introduction to the crossover and then focus on recent progress in the strongly interacting regime. Although our focus is on new theoretical developments, we also describe three key experiments that probe the thermodynamics, transport, and spectroscopy of the unitary Fermi gas. We discuss connections between the unitary regime and other areas of physics—quark-gluon plasmas, gauge-gravity duality, and high-temperature superconductivity—and conclude with open questions about strongly interacting Fermi gases.