We consider the angular momentum of a harmonically trapped, noninteracting Fermi gas subject to either rotation or to an artificial gauge field. The angular momentum of the gas is shown to display oscillations as a function of the particle number or chemical potential. This phenomenon is analogous to the de Haas--van Alphen oscillations of the magnetization in the solid-state context. However, key differences exist between the solid-state and ultracold atomic gases that we point out and analyze. We explore the dependence of the visibility of these oscillations on the physical parameters and propose two experimental protocols for their observation. Due to the very strong dependence of the amplitude of the oscillations on temperature, we propose their use as a sensitive thermometer for Fermi gases in the low-temperature regime.
Abstract We have analytically explored the quantum phenomena of particle scattering by rotating trapped quantum gases of electrically neutral bosons and fermions for the short-ranged Fermi-Huang interactions between the incident particle and the scatterers. We have predicted differential scattering cross-sections and their temperature and angular velocity dependencies in this regard, in particular, for an ideal Bose gas in a rotating harmonic trap, an ideal Fermi gas in a rotating harmonic trap, and a weakly interacting Bose gas in a slow rotating harmonic trap. We have theoretically probed the lattice-pattern of the vortices in a rapidly rotating strongly interacting Bose–Einstein condensate by the particle scattering method. We also have obtained de Haas-van Alphen-like oscillations in the differential scattering cross-section for an ideal ultracold Fermi gas in a rotating harmonic trap. Our predictions on the differential scattering cross-sections can be tested within the present-day experimental setups.
We study the ground state of $N\ensuremath{\gg}1$ noninteracting fermions in a two-dimensional harmonic trap rotating at angular frequency $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}>0$. The support of the density of the Fermi gas is a disk of radius
Re. We calculate the variance of the number of fermions,
NR, inside a disk of radius
R centered at the origin for
R in the bulk of the Fermi gas. We find rich and interesting behaviors in two different scaling regimes, (i) $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}/\ensuremath{\omega}<1$ and (ii) $1\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}/\ensuremath{\omega}=O(1/N)$, where $\ensuremath{\omega}$ is the angular frequency of the oscillator. In the first regime we find that $\mathrm{Var}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{\mathcal{N}}_{R}\ensuremath{\simeq}(AlnN+B)\sqrt{N}$ and we calculate
A and
B as functions of
R/Re, $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$, and $\ensuremath{\omega}$. We also predict the higher cumulants of
NR and the bipartite entanglement entropy of the disk with the rest of the system. In the second regime, the mean fermion density exhibits a staircase form, with discrete plateaus corresponding to filling
k successive Landau levels, as found in previous studies. Here, we show that
VarNR is a discontinuous piecewise linear function of $\ensuremath{\sim}(R/{R}_{e})\sqrt{N}$ within each plateau, with coefficients that we calculate exactly, and with steps whose precise shape we obtain for any
k. We argue that a similar piecewise linear behavior extends to all the cumulants of
NR and to the entanglement entropy. We show that these results match smoothly at large
k with the above results for $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}/\ensuremath{\omega}=O(1)$. These findings are nicely confirmed by numerical simulations. Finally, we uncover a universal behavior of
VarNR near the fermionic edge. We extend our results to a three-dimensional geometry, where an additional confining potential is applied in the
z direction.
By rotating two-component fermionic atom gases in uniform magnetic field, a similar physical situation with de Haas-van Alphen effect is constructed. We calculate magnetic moment of the system and find that owing to an existence of effective magnetic field coming from the rotation, the magnetic moment also shows the oscillatory behavior about magnetic field, but it is completely different from the famous oscillation of de Haas-van Alphen effect. This distinction is due to that in the atomic gases the orbital motion of atom only couples to rotation and does not contribute to magnetic moment in the light of atomic charge neutrality.
We study the thermodynamic properties of an ideal gas of fermions in a harmonic oscillator confining potential. The analogy between this problem and the de Haas-van Alphen effect is discussed and used to obtain analytical results for the chemical potential and specific heat in the case of an isotropic potential. Step-like behaviour in the chemical potential, first noted in numerical studies, is obtained analytically and shown to result in an oscillatory behaviour of the specific heat when the particle number is varied. The origin of these oscillations is that part of the thermodynamic potential responsible for the de Haas-van Alphen effect. At low temperatures we show that there are significant deviations in the specific heat from the expected linear temperature dependence again as a consequence of the de Haas-van Alphen part of the thermodynamic potential. Results are given for one, two, and three spatial dimensions.