Noninteracting Fermi Gas Research Articles

Dimensional crossover in a Fermi gas and a cross-dimensional Tomonaga-Luttinger model

We describe the dimensional crossover in a noninteracting Fermi gas in an anisotropic trap, obtained by populating various transverse modes of the trap. We study the dynamical structure factor and drag force. Starting from a dimension $d$, the $(\!d\!+\!1\!)$-dimensional case is obtained to a good approximation with relatively few modes. We show that the dynamical structure factor of a gas in a $d$-dimensional harmonic trap simulates an effective $2d$-dimensional box trap. We focus then on the experimentally relevant situation when only a portion of the gas in harmonic confinement is probed and give a condition to obtain the behavior of a $d$-dimensional gas in a box. Finally, we propose a generalized Tomonaga-Luttinger model for the multimode configuration and compare the dynamical structure factor in the 2D limit with the exact result, finding that it is accurate in the backscattering region and at low energy.

Dynamic structure factors and sum rules in two-component quantum gases with spin-orbit coupling

Sum rules for the dynamic structure factors are powerful tools to explore the collective behaviors in many-body systems at zero temperature as well as at finite temperatures. The recent remarkable realization of synthetic spin-orbit (SO) coupling in quantum gases is opening up new perspective to study the intriguing SO effects with ultracold atoms. So far, a specific type of SO coupling, which is generated by a pair of Raman laser beams, has been experimentally achieved in Bose-Einstein condensates of 87Rb and degenerate Fermi gases of 40K and 6Li. In the presence of SO coupling, the dynamic structure factors for the density fluctuation and spin fluctuation satisfy different sum rules. In particular, in the two-component quantum gases with inter-species Raman coupling, the f-sum rule for the spin fluctuation has an additional term proportional to the transverse spin polarization. Due to the coupling between the momentum and spin, the first moment of the dynamic structure factor does not necessarily possess the inversion symmetry, which is in strong contrast to the conventional system without SO coupling. Such an asymmetric behavior could be observed in both Fermi gases and Bose gases with Raman coupling. As a demonstration, we focus on the uniform case at zero temperature in this work. For the non-interacting Fermi gases, the asymmetric first moment appears only when the Raman detuning is finite. The asymmetric amplitude is quite limited, and it vanishes at both zero detuning and infinite detuning. For the weakly interacting Bose gases, the first moment is asymmetric in momentum space even at zero detuning, when the ground state spontaneously breaks the Z2 symmetry in the plane-wave condensation phase. Using the Bogoliubov method, the dynamic structure factor and its first moment are explicitly calculated for various interaction parameters. We find that the asymmetric behavior in the spin channel could be much more significant than in the density channel, and the asymmetric amplitude is enhanced as the interaction strength increases. Experimentally, the dynamic structure factors can be directly measured through the two photon Bragg scattering. Numeric simulations show that to observe the deviation of inversion symmetry in the first moment, the resolution of the Bragg spectroscopy should reach a required value. For the typical parameters of the rubidium atomic gas, the required resolution is about 10-2Er with Er being the recoil energy. Our predictions can be tested in the future experiment.

Thermodynamics of Fermi gases in three dimensional fuzzy space

We use the recently derived density of states for a particle confined to a spherical well in three dimensional fuzzy space to compute the thermodynamics of a gas of non-interacting fermions confined to such a well. Special emphasis is placed on non-commutative effects and in particular non-commutative corrections to the thermodynamics at low densities and temperatures are computed where the non-relativistic approximation used here is valid. Non-commutative effects at high densities are also identified, the most prominent being the existence of a minimal volume at which the gas becomes incompressible. The latter is closely related to a low/high density duality exhibited by these systems, which in turn is a manifestation of an infra-red/ultra violet duality in the single particle spectrum. Both non-rotating and slowly rotating gasses are studied. Approximations are benchmarked against exact numerical computations for the non-rotating case and several other properties of the gas are demonstrated with numerical computations. Finally, a non-commutative gas confined by gravity is studied and several novel features regarding the mass-radius relation, density and entropy are highlighted.

Spectral zeta function and non-perturbative effects in ABJM Fermi-gas

The exact partition function in ABJM theory on three-sphere can be regarded as a canonical partition function of a non-interacting Fermi-gas with an unconventional Hamiltonian. All the information on the partition function is encoded in the discrete spectrum of this Hamiltonian. We explain how (quantum mechanical) non-perturbative corrections in the Fermi-gas system appear from a spectral consideration. Basic tools in our analysis are a Mellin-Barnes type integral representation and a spectral zeta function. From a consistency with known results, we conjecture that the spectral zeta function in the ABJM Fermi-gas has an infinite number of "non-perturbative" poles, which are invisible in the semi-classical expansion of the Planck constant. We observe that these poles indeed appear after summing up perturbative corrections. As a consequence, the perturbative resummation of the spectral zeta function causes non-perturbative corrections to the grand canonical partition function. We also present another example associated with a spectral problem in topological string theory. A conjectured non-perturbative free energy on the resolved conifold is successfully reproduced in this framework.

Finite-size Energy of Non-interacting Fermi Gases

We study the asymptotics of the difference of the ground-state energies of two non-interacting N-particle Fermi gases in a finite volume of length L in the thermodynamic limit up to order 1/L. We are particularly interested in subdominant terms proportional to 1/L, called finite-size energy. In the nineties (Affleck, Nuc. Phys. B 58, 35–41 1997; Zagoskin and Affleck, J. Phys. A 30, 5743–5765 1997) claimed that the finite-size energy is related to the decay exponent occurring in Anderson’s orthogonality. We prove that the finite-size energy depends on the details of the thermodynamic limit and is therefore non-universal. Typically, it includes an additional linear term in the scattering phase shift.

The spectral problem of the ABJ Fermi gas

The partition function on the three-sphere of ABJ theory can be rewritten into a partition function of a non-interacting Fermi gas, with an accompanying one-particle Hamiltonian. We study the spectral problem defined by this Hamiltonian. We determine the exact WKB quantization condition, which involves quantities from refined topological string theory, and test it successfully against numerical calculations of the spectrum.

Quantum fluctuations in the BCS-BEC crossover of two-dimensional Fermi gases

We present a theoretical study of the ground state of the BCS-BEC crossover in dilute two-dimensional Fermi gases. While the mean-field theory provides a simple and analytical equation of state, the pressure is equal to that of a noninteracting Fermi gas in the entire BCS-BEC crossover, which is not consistent with the features of a weakly interacting Bose condensate in the BEC limit and a weakly interacting Fermi liquid in the BCS limit. The inadequacy of the 2D mean-field theory indicates that the quantum fluctuations are much more pronounced than those in 3D. In this work, we show that the inclusion of the Gaussian quantum fluctuations naturally recovers the above features in both the BEC and the BCS limits. In the BEC limit, the missing logarithmic dependence on the boson chemical potential is recovered by the quantum fluctuations. Near the quantum phase transition from the vacuum to the BEC phase, we compare our equation of state with the known grand canonical equation of state of 2D Bose gases and determine the ratio of the composite boson scattering length $a_{\rm B}$ to the fermion scattering length $a_{\rm 2D}$. We find $a_{\rm B}\simeq 0.56 a_{\rm 2D}$, in good agreement with the exact four-body calculation. We compare our equation of state in the BCS-BEC crossover with recent results from the quantum Monte Carlo simulations and the experimental measurements and find good agreements.

Observation of a Fragmented, Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas.

We study the emergence of a fragmented state in a strongly interacting Fermi gas subject to a tunable disorder. We investigate its properties using a combination of high-resolution in situ imaging and conductance measurements. The fragmented state exhibits saturated density modulations, a strongly reduced density percolation threshold, lower than the average density, and a resistance equal to that of a noninteracting Fermi gas in the same potential landscape. The transport measurements further indicate that this state is connected to the superfluid state as disorder is reduced. We propose that the fragmented state consists of unpercolated islands of bound pairs, whose binding energy is enhanced by the disorder.

The asymptotics of an eigenfunction-correlation determinant for Dirac-δ perturbations

We prove the exact asymptotics of the scalar product of the ground states of two non-interacting Fermi gases confined to a 3-dimensional ball BL of radius L in the thermodynamic limit, where the underlying one-particle operators differ by a Dirac-δ perturbation. More precisely, we show the algebraic decay of the correlation determinant det〈φjL,ψkL〉j,k=1,…,N2=L−ζ(E)+o(1), as N, L → ∞ and N/BL→ρ>0, where φjL and ψkL denote the lowest-energy eigenfunctions of the finite-volume one-particle Schrödinger operators. The decay exponent is given in terms of the s-wave scattering phase shift ζ(E)≔1π2δ2(E). For an attractive Dirac-δ perturbation, we conclude that the decay exponent 1π2arcsinT(E)/2HS2 found in the work of Gebert et al. [J. Spect. Theory (to be published); e-print arXiv:1407.2512] does not provide a sharp upper bound on the decay of the correlation determinant.

Temperature derivative of the chemical potential and its magneto-oscillations in a two-dimensional system

We report first thermodynamic measurements of the temperature derivative of chemical potential (d{\mu}/dT) in two-dimensional (2D) electron systems. In order to test the technique we have chosen Schottky gated GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunctions and detected experimentally in this 2D system quantum magnetooscillations of d{\mu}/dT. We also present a Lifshits-Kosevitch type theory for the d{\mu}/dT magnetooscillations in 2D systems and compare the theory with experimental data. The magnetic field dependence of the d{\mu}/dT value appears to be sensitive to the density of states shape of Landau levels. The data in low magnetic field domain demonstrate brilliant agreement with theory for non-interacting Fermi gas with Lorentzian Landau level shape.

Thermodynamic Equivalent between Noninteracting Bose and Fermi Gas in Metallic Carbon Nanotubes

The equivalent between Bose and Fermi ideal gases is usually taken in high temperature limit only. Recently, there has been considerable interest in surprising thermodynamic ``equivalences'' between certain ideal Bose and spineless Fermi gas systems in lower temperature. In this work, we follow that idea to investigate the quasi one-dimensional system of metallic carbon nanotubes. Due to the linear dispersion law, the non-interacting Bose and Fermi gases in metallic carbon nanotubes are equivalent. This equivalence could be applied to the gas systems of exciton photon (Bose particles) and electron hole (Fermi particles) in metallic carbon nanotubes.

Non-equilibrium transport in d-dimensional non-interacting Fermi gases

.We consider a non-interacting Fermi gas in d dimensions, both in the non-relativistic and relativistic case. The system of size Ld is initially prepared into two halves and , each of them thermalized at two different temperatures, and respectively. At time t = 0 the two halves are put in contact and the entire system is left to evolve unitarily. We show that, in the thermodynamic limit, the time evolution of the particle and energy densities is perfectly described by a semiclassical approach which permits to analytically evaluate the corresponding stationary currents. In particular, in the case of non-relativistic fermions, we find a low-temperature behavior for the particle and energy currents which is independent from the dimensionality d of the system, being proportional to the difference . Only in one spatial dimension (d = 1) do the results for the non-relativistic case agree with the massless relativistic ones

Perpetual motion of a mobile impurity in a one-dimensional quantum gas

Consider an impurity particle injected in a degenerate one-dimensional gas of noninteracting fermions (or, equivalently, Tonks-Girardeau bosons) with some initial momentum ${p}_{0}$. We examine the infinite-time value of the momentum of the impurity, ${p}_{\ensuremath{\infty}}$, as a function of ${p}_{0}$. A lower bound on $|{p}_{\ensuremath{\infty}}({p}_{0})|$ is derived under fairly general conditions. The derivation, based on the existence of the lower edge of the spectrum of the host gas, does not resort to any approximations. The existence of such bound implies the perpetual motion of the impurity in a one-dimensional gas of noninteracting fermions or Tonks-Girardeau bosons at zero temperature. The bound admits an especially simple and useful form when the interaction between the impurity and host particles is everywhere repulsive.

On the Atomic Orbital Magnetism: A Rigorous Derivation of the Larmor and Van Vleck Contributions

The purpose of this paper is to rigorously investigate the orbital magnetism of core electrons in three-dimensional crystalline ordered solids and in the zero-temperature regime. To achieve that, we consider a non-interacting Fermi gas subjected to an external periodic potential modeling the crystalline field within the tight-binding approximation (i.e., when the distance between two consecutive ions is large). For a fixed number of particles in the Wigner–Seitz cell and in the zero-temperature limit, we derive an asymptotic expansion for the bulk zero-field orbital susceptibility. We prove that the leading term is the superposition of the Larmor diamagnetic contribution, generated by the quadratic part of the Zeeman Hamiltonian, together with the ‘complete’ orbital Van Vleck paramagnetic contribution, generated by the linear part of the Zeeman Hamiltonian, and related to field-induced electronic transitions.

Non-Galilean response of Rashba-coupled Fermi gases

We consider the effect of a momentum kick on the ground state of a non-interacting two-dimensional Fermi gas subject to Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Although the total momentum is a constant of motion, the gas does not obey the rules of Galilean relativity. Upon imprinting a small overall velocity to the non-interacting gas, we find that the Fermi sea is deformed in a non-trivial way. We also consider a weakly repulsive Fermi gas, and find, from its Hartree shift, that the total ground state of the system may change into a deformed, finite momentum ground state as the repulsion is increased beyond a critical value, without the need of any external Zeeman fields. We also discuss possible experimental signatures of these effects.

Universality in the Full Counting Statistics of Trapped Fermions

We study the distribution of particle number in extended subsystems of a one-dimensional noninteracting Fermi gas confined in a potential well at zero temperature. Universal features are identified in the scaled bulk and edge regions of the trapped gas where the full counting statistics are given by the corresponding limits of the eigenvalue statistics in Gaussian unitary random matrix ensembles. The universal limiting behavior is confirmed by the bulk and edge scaling of the particle number fluctuations and the entanglement entropy.

Self-trapping of Fermi and Bose gases under spatially modulated repulsive nonlinearity and transverse confinement

We show that self-localized ground states can be created in the spin-balanced gas of fermions with repulsion between the spin components, whose strength grows from the center to periphery, in combination with the harmonic-oscillator (HO) trapping potential acting in one or two transverse directions. We also consider the ground state in the noninteracting Fermi gas under the action of the spatially growing tightness of the one- or two-dimensional (1D or 2D) HO confinement. These settings are considered in the framework of the Thomas-Fermi--von Weizs\"acker (TF--vW) density functional. It is found that the vW correction to the simple TF approximation (the gradient term) is nearly negligible in all situations. The properties of the ground state under the action of the 2D and 1D HO confinement with the tightness growing in the transverse directions are investigated too for the Bose-Einstein condensate with the self-repulsive nonlinearity.

Quantum oscillations in ultracold Fermi gases: Realizations with rotating gases or artificial gauge fields

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.

Theories of Linear Response in BCS Superfluids and How They Meet Fundamental Constraints

We address the importance of symmetry and symmetry breaking on linear response theories of fermionic BCS superfluids. The linear theory of a noninteracting Fermi gas is reviewed and several consistency constraints are verified. The challenge to formulate linear response theories of BCS superfluids consistent with density and spin conservation laws comes from the presence of a broken U(1)$_{\textrm{EM}}$ symmetry associated with electromagnetism (EM) and we discuss two routes for circumventing this. The first route follows Nambu's integral-equation approach for the EM vertex function, but this method is not specific for BCS superfluids. We focus on the second route based on a consistent-fluctuation-of-the order-parameter (CFOP) approach where the gauge transformation and the fluctuations of the order parameter are treated on equal footing. The CFOP approach allows one to explicitly verify several important constraints: The EM vertex satisfies not only a Ward identity which guarantees charge conservation but also a $Q$-limit Ward identity associated with the compressibility sum rule. In contrast, the spin degrees of freedom associated with another U(1)$_z$ symmetry are not affected by the Cooper-pair condensation that breaks only the U(1)$_{\textrm{EM}}$ symmetry. As a consequence the collective modes from the fluctuations of the order parameter only couple to the density response function but decouple from the spin response function, which reflects the different fates of the two U(1) symmetries in the superfluid phase. Our formulation lays the ground work for application to more general theories of BCS-Bose Einstein Condensation crossover both above and below $T_c$.

Momentum-resolved radio-frequency spectroscopy of ultracold atomic Fermi gases in a spin-orbit-coupled lattice

We investigate theoretically momentum-resolved radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy of a noninteracting atomic Fermi gas in a spin-orbit coupled lattice. This lattice configuration has been recently created at MIT [Cheuk et al., arXiv:1205.3483] for 6Li atoms, by coupling the two hyperfine spin-states with a pair of Raman laser beams and additional rf coupling. Here, we show that momentum-resolved rf spectroscopy can measure single-particle energies and eigenstates and therefore resolve the band structure of the spin-orbit coupled lattice. In our calculations, we take into account the effects of temperatures and harmonic traps. Our predictions are to be confronted with future experiments on spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases of 40K atoms in a lattice potential.