A statistical theory of the mean field

A statistical theory of the mean field is developed. It is based on the proposition that the mean field can be obtained as an energy average. Moreover, it is assumed that the matrix elements of the residual interaction, obtained after the average interaction is removed, are random with the average value of zero. With these two assumptions one obtains explicit expressions for the mean field and the fluctuation away from the average. The fluctuation is expanded in terms of more and more complex excitations. Using the randomness of the matrix elements one can then obtain formulas for the contribution to the error from each class of complex excitations and a general condition for the convergence of the expansion is derived. It is to be emphasized that no conditions on the nature of the system being studied are made. Making some simplifying assumptions a schematic model is developed. This model is applied to the problem of nuclear matter. The model yields a measure of the strength of the effective interaction. It turns out to be three orders of magnitude less than that calculated using a potential which gives a binding energy of about -7 MeV/nucleon demonstrating the strong damping of the interaction strength induced by the averaging process.Comment: 25 pages, REVTeX, 4 eps figure

Ground state energy fluctuations in nuclear matter II

Improvements are performed on a recently proposed statistical theory of the mean field of a many-fermion system. The dependence of the predictions of the theory upon its two basic ingredients, namely the Hartree-Fock energy and the average energy of the two particle-two hole excitations, is explored.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, revte

Collisional oscillations of trapped boson-fermion mixtures approaching collapse

We study the collective modes of a confined gaseous cloud of bosons and fermions with mutual attractive interactions at zero temperature. The cloud consists of a Bose-Einstein condensate and a spin-polarized Fermi gas inside a spherical harmonic trap and the coupling between the two species is varied by increasing either the magnitude of the interspecies s-wave scattering length or the number of bosons. The mode frequencies are obtained in the collisional regime by solving the equations of generalized hydrodynamics and are compared with the spectra calculated in the collisionless regime within a random-phase approximation. We find that, as the mixture is driven towards the collapse instability, the frequencies of the modes of fermionic origin show a blue shift which can become very significant for large numbers of bosons. Instead the modes of bosonic origin show a softening, which becomes most pronounced in the very proximity of collapse. Explicit illustrations of these trends are given for the monopolar spectra, but similar trends are found for the dipolar and quadrupolar spectra except for the surface (n=0) modes which are essentially unaffected by the interactions.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, revtex

Feshbach Resonance Cooling of Trapped Atom Pairs

Spectroscopic studies of few-body systems at ultracold temperatures provide valuable information that often cannot be extracted in a hot environment. Considering a pair of atoms, we propose a cooling mechanism that makes use of a scattering Feshbach resonance. Application of a series of time-dependent magnetic field ramps results in the situation in which either zero, one, or two atoms remain trapped. If two atoms remain in the trap after the field ramps are completed, then they have been cooled. Application of the proposed cooling mechanism to optical traps or lattices is considered.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; v.2: major conceptual change

Creating Ground State Molecules with Optical Feshbach Resonances in Tight Traps

We propose to create ultracold ground state molecules in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate by adiabatic crossing of an optical Feshbach resonance. We envision a scheme where the laser intensity and possibly also frequency are linearly ramped over the resonance. Our calculations for $^{87}$Rb show that for sufficiently tight traps it is possible to avoid spontaneous emission while retaining adiabaticity, and conversion efficiencies of up to 50% can be expected

From an insulating to a superfluid pair-bond liquid

We study an exchange coupled system of itinerant electrons and localized fermion pairs resulting in a resonant pairing formation. This system inherently contains resonating fermion pairs on bonds which lead to a superconducting phase provided that long range phase coherence between their constituents can be established. The prerequisite is that the resonating fermion pairs can become itinerant. This is rendered possible through the emergence of two kinds of bond-fermions: individual and composite fermions made of one individual electron attached to a bound pair on a bond. If the strength of the exchange coupling exceeds a certain value, the superconducting ground state undergoes a quantum phase transition into an insulating pair-bond liquid state. The gap of the superfluid phase thereby goes over continuously into a charge gap of the insulator. The change-over from the superconducting to the insulating phase is accompanied by a corresponding qualitative modification of the dispersion of the two kinds of fermionic excitations. Using a bond operator formalism, we derive the phase diagram of such a scenario together with the elementary excitations characterizing the various phases as a function of the exchange coupling and the temperature.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Creating stable molecular condensate using a generalized Raman adiabatic passage scheme

We study the Feshbach resonance assisted stimulated adiabatic passage of an effective coupling field for creating stable molecules from atomic Bose condensate. By exploring the properties of the coherent population trapping state, we show that, contrary to the previous belief, mean-field shifts need not to limit the conversion efficiency as long as one chooses an adiabatic passage route that compensates the collision mean-field phase shifts and avoids the dynamical unstable regime.Comment: 4+\epsilon pages, 3 figure

Three-State Feshbach Resonances Mediated By Second-Order Couplings

We present an analytical study of three-state Feshbach resonances induced by second-order couplings. Such resonances arise when the scattering amplitude is modified by the interaction with a bound state that is not directly coupled to the scattering state containing incoming flux. Coupling occurs indirectly through an intermediate state. We consider two problems: (i) the intermediate state is a scattering state in a distinct open channel; (ii) the intermediate state is an off-resonant bound state in a distinct closed channel. The first problem is a model of electric-field-induced resonances in ultracold collisions of alkali metal atoms [Phys. Rev. A 75, 032709 (2007)] and the second problem is relevant for ultracold collisions of complex polyatomic molecules, chemical reaction dynamics, photoassociation of ultracold atoms, and electron - molecule scattering. Our analysis yields general expressions for the energy dependence of the T-matrix elements modified by three-state resonances and the dependence of the resonance positions and widths on coupling amplitudes for the weak-coupling limit. We show that the second problem can be generalized to describe resonances induced by indirect coupling through an arbitrary number of sequentially coupled off-resonant bound states and analyze the dependence of the resonance width on the number of the intermediate states.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures; added a reference; journal reference/DOI refer to final published version, which is a shortened and modified version of this preprin

Proton-tetraneutron elastic scattering

We analyze the elastic scattering of protons on a 4n system. This was used as part of the detection technique of a recent experiment [1] to search for the 4n (tetraneutron) as a bound particle. We show that it is unlikely that this process alone could yield the events reported in ref. [1], unless the 4n has an anomalously large backward elastic scattering amplitude.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.