Zero-temperature phase diagram of Yukawa bosons

We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of bosons interacting via screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potential by means of the diffusion Monte Carlo method. The Yukawa potential is used as a model interaction in the neutron matter, dusty plasmas and charged colloids. As shown by D. S. Petrov et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 130407 (2007)], interactions between weakly bound molecules of heavy and light fermionic atoms are described by an effective Yukawa potential with a strength related to the heavy-light mass ratio M/m which might lead to crystallization in a two-dimensional geometry if the mass ratio of heavy-light fermions exceeds a certain critical value. In the present work we do a thorough study of the quantum three-dimensional Yukawa system. For strong interactions (equivalently, large mass ratios) the system experiences several phase transitions as the density is increased, passing from gas to solid and to gas phase again. Weakly interacting Yukawa particles do not crystallize at any density. We find the minimal interaction strength at which the crystallization happens. In terms of the two-component fermionic system, this strength corresponds to a heavy-light mass ratio of M/m ~ 180, so that it is impossible to realize the gas-crystal transition in a conventional bulk system. For the Yukawa model of fermionic mixtures we also analyze the possibility of building molecular systems with very large effective mass ratios by confining the heavy component to a sufficiently deep optical lattice. We show how the effective mass of the heavy component can be made arbitrarily large by increasing the lattice depth, thus leading to a tunable effective mass ratio that can be used to realize a molecular superlattice.Comment: added figure with finite-size dependence of the energy; comments and references added; title change

Liberating Efimov physics from three dimensions

When two particles attract via a resonant short-range interaction, three particles always form an infinite tower of bound states characterized by a discrete scaling symmetry. It has been considered that this Efimov effect exists only in three dimensions. Here we review how the Efimov physics can be liberated from three dimensions by considering two-body and three-body interactions in mixed dimensions and four-body interaction in one dimension. In such new systems, intriguing phenomena appear, such as confinement-induced Efimov effect, Bose-Fermi crossover in Efimov spectrum, and formation of interlayer Efimov trimers. Some of them are observable in ultracold atom experiments and we believe that this study significantly broadens our horizons of universal Efimov physics.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, contribution to a special issue of Few-Body Systems devoted to Efimov Physic

Feshbach spectroscopy and analysis of the interaction potentials of ultracold sodium

We have studied magnetic Feshbach resonances in an ultracold sample of Na prepared in the absolute hyperfine ground state. We report on the observation of three s-, eight d-, and three g-wave Feshbach resonances, including a more precise determination of two known s-wave resonances, and one s-wave resonance at a magnetic field exceeding 200mT. Using a coupled-channels calculation we have improved the sodium ground-state potentials by taking into account these new experimental data, and derived values for the scattering lengths. In addition, a description of the molecular states leading to the Feshbach resonances in terms of the asymptotic-bound-state model is presented.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure