Tunable Wigner States with Dipolar Atoms and Molecules

We study the few-body physics of trapped atoms or molecules with electric or magnetic dipole moments aligned by an external field. Using exact numerical diagonalization appropriate for the strongly correlated regime, as well as a classical analysis, we show how Wigner localization emerges with increasing coupling strength. The Wigner states exhibit non-trivial geometries due to the anisotropy of the interaction. This leads to transitions between different Wigner states as the tilt angle of the dipoles with the confining plane is changed. Intriguingly, while the individual Wigner states are well described by a classical analysis, the transitions between different Wigner states are strongly affected by quantum statistics. This can be understood by considering the interplay between quantum-mechanical and spatial symmetry properties. Finally, we demonstrate that our results are relevant to experimentally realistic systems.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Spin diffusion in trapped clouds of strongly interacting cold atoms

We show that puzzling recent experimental results on spin diffusion in a strongly interacting atomic gas may be understood in terms of the predicted spin diffusion coefficient for a generic strongly interacting system. Three important features play a central role: a) Fick's law for diffusion must be modified to allow for the trapping potential, b) the diffusion coefficient is inhomogeneous, due to the density variations in the cloud and c) the diffusion approximation fails in the outer parts of the cloud, where the mean free path is long.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, minor modifications to the text and figures in 2. versio

Polarons and Molecules in a Two-Dimensional Fermi Gas

We study an impurity atom in a two-dimensional Fermi gas using variational wave functions for (i) an impurity dressed by particle-hole excitations (polaron) and (ii) a dimer consisting of the impurity and a majority atom. In contrast to three dimensions, where similar calculations predict a sharp transition to a dimer state with increasing interspecies attraction, we show that the polaron ansatz always gives a lower energy. However, the exact solution for a heavy impurity reveals that both a two-body bound state and distortions of the Fermi sea are crucial. This reflects the importance of particle-hole pairs in lower dimensions and makes simple variational calculations unreliable. We show that the energy of an impurity gives important information about its dressing cloud, for which both ans\"atze give inaccurate results.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, minor change

Clock shifts in a Fermi gas interacting with a minority component: a soluble model

We consider the absorption spectrum of a Fermi gas mixed with a minority species when majority fermions are transferred to another internal state by an external probe. In the limit when the minority species is much more massive than the majority one, we show that the minority species may be treated as static impurities and the problem can be solved in closed form. The analytical results bring out the importance of vertex corrections, which change qualitatively the nature of the absorption spectrum. It is demonstrated that large line shifts are not associated with resonant interactions in general. We also show that the commonly used ladder approximation fails when the majority component is degenerate for large mass ratios between the minority and majority species and that bubble diagrams, which correspond to the creation of many particle--hole pairs, must be taken into account. We carry out detailed numerical calculations, which confirm the analytical insights and we point out the connection to shadowing phenomena in nuclear physics.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, NORDITA-2010-

An effective theory of Feshbach resonances and many-body properties of Fermi gases

For calculating low-energy properties of a dilute gas of atoms interacting via a Feshbach resonance, we develop an effective theory in which the parameters that enter are an atom-molecule coupling strength and the magnetic moment of the molecular resonance. We demonstrate that for resonances in the fermionic systems $^{6}$Li and $^{40}$K that are under experimental investigation, the coupling is so strong that many-body effects are appreciable even when the resonance lies at an energy large compared with the Fermi energy. We calculate a number of many-body effects, including the effective mass and the lifetime of atomic quasiparticles in the gas.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, NORDITA-2003-21 C

Low energy monopole Modes of a Trapped atomic Fermi Gas

We consider the low energy collective monopole modes of a trapped weakly interacting atomic Fermi gas in the collisionless regime. The spectrum is calculated for varying coupling strength and chemical potential. Using an effective Hamiltonian, we derive analytical results that agree well with numerical calculations in various regimes. The onset of superfluidity is shown to lead to effects such as the vanishing of the energy required to create a Cooper molecule at a critical coupling strength and to the emergence of pair vibration excitations. Our analysis suggests ways to experimentally detect the presence of the superfluid phase in trapped atomic Fermi gases.Comment: 5 pages & 1 figure. Accepted for Phys. Rev. Let

Viscous relaxation and collective oscillations in a trapped Fermi gas near the unitarity limit

The viscous relaxation time of a trapped two-component gas of fermions in its normal phase is calculated as a function of temperature and scattering length, with the collision probability being determined by an energy-dependent s-wave cross section. The result is used for calculating the temperature dependence of the frequency and damping of collective modes studied in recent experiments, starting from the kinetic equation for the fermion distribution function with mean-field effects included in the streaming terms.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures; proof version, corrected typo in Eq. (23); accepted for publication in PR

Viscosity and Thermal Relaxation for a resonantly interacting Fermi gas

The viscous and thermal relaxation rates of an interacting fermion gas are calculated as functions of temperature and scattering length, using a many-body scattering matrix which incorporates medium effects due to Fermi blocking of intermediate states. These effects are demonstrated to be large close to the transition temperature $T_c$ to the superfluid state. For a homogeneous gas in the unitarity limit, the relaxation rates are increased by nearly an order of magnitude compared to their value obtained in the absence of medium effects due to the Cooper instability at $T_c$. For trapped gases the corresponding ratio is found to be about three due to the averaging over the inhomogeneous density distribution. The effect of superfluidity below $T_c$ is considered to leading order in the ratio between the energy gap and the transition temperature.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Self-bound many-body states of quasi-one-dimensional dipolar Fermi gases: Exploiting Bose-Fermi mappings for generalized contact interactions

Using a combination of results from exact mappings and from mean-field theory we explore the phase diagram of quasi-one-dimensional systems of identical fermions with attractive dipolar interactions. We demonstrate that at low density these systems provide a realization of a single-component one-dimensional Fermi gas with a generalized contact interaction. Using an exact duality between one-dimensional Fermi and Bose gases, we show that when the dipole moment is strong enough, bound many-body states exist, and we calculate the critical coupling strength for the emergence of these states. At higher densities, the Hartree-Fock approximation is accurate, and by combining the two approaches we determine the structure of the phase diagram. The many-body bound states should be accessible in future experiments with ultracold polar molecules