Luther-Emery phase and atomic-density waves in a trapped fermion gas

Marco Polini
(NEST-CNR-INFM and Scuola Normale Superiore)

Pisa (Tuscany, Italy) (Tuscany, Italy)

Collaborators: Rosario Fazio, Xianlong Gao, Matteo Rizzi, and Mario Tosi (Italy) Vivaldo Campo Jr. and Klaus Capelle (Brasil) Jairo Sinova and Allan MacDonald (Texas)

October 2006

Outline
!Introduction and motivations Ultracold atoms and optical lattices Why are cold gases interesting? Bloch Oscillations, Vortices, Tonks-Girardeau limit, Quantum Phase Transitions !Rotating optical lattices, effective magnetic fields, and frustration !A reminder of density-functional theory (the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham mapping) !One-dimensional two-component attractive fermions on a lattice (and very brief intro to the Luther-Emery liquid) !Spin-pairing and atomic-density waves in the presence of confinement !Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Optical lattices: artificial crystals of light for cold atoms

I. Bloch, Nature Physics 1, 23 (2005)

thanks to Markus Greiner

M.P.A. Fisher et al., Phys. Rev. B 40, 546 (1989)

Bloch oscillations in cold atom systems

cold cesium atoms
87Rb

BEC

M.B. Dahan et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 4508 (1996)

B.P. Anderson and M.A. Kasevich, Science 282, 1686 (1998)

40K

Fermi gas

G. Roati et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230402 (2004)

Superfluid-to-Mott insulator quantum phase transition

complete tunability of interactions

D. Jaksch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3108 (1998)

M. Greiner et al., Nature 415, 39 (2002)

Vortices and Abrikosov vortex arrays

K.W. Madison et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 806 (2000)

16

32

80

130

J.R. Abo-Shaeer et al., Science 292, 476 (2001)

Superfluidity in spin polarized gases

Polarization increases in this direction

M.W. Zwierlein et al., Science 311, 492 (2006)

Phase separation and exotic superfluid states (FFLO, et cetera)

Y. Shin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 030401 (2006)

Outline
!Introduction and motivations Ultracold atoms and optical lattices Why are cold gases interesting? Bloch Oscillations, Vortices, and Quantum Phase Transitions !Rotating optical lattices, effective magnetic fields, and frustration !A reminder of density-functional theory (the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham mapping) !One-dimensional two-component attractive fermions on a lattice (and brief intro to the Luther-Emery liquid) !Spin-pairing and atomic-density waves in the presence of confinement !Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Rotating optical lattices and effective magnetic fields !

rotating hologram

d
R. Fazio and H. van der Zant, Phys. Rep. 355, 235 (2001)

M. Polini et al., Laser Physics 14, 603 (2004) C. Wu et al., Phys. Rev. A 69, 043609 (2004)

Other ways: D. Jaksch and P. Zoller, New J. Phys. 5, 56 (2003) E.J. Mueller, Phys. Rev. A 70, 041603 (2004) A.S. Sorensen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 086803 (2005)

Fully Frustrated Cold Bosons: U(1) and Ising order

M. Polini, R. Fazio, A.H. MacDonald, and M.P. Tosi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 010401 (2005)

Outline
!Introduction and motivations Ultracold atoms and optical lattices Why are cold gases interesting? Bloch Oscillations, Vortices, and Quantum Phase Transitions !Rotating optical lattices, effective magnetic fields, and frustration !A reminder of density-functional theory (the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham mapping) !One-dimensional two-component attractive fermions on a lattice (and brief intro to the Luther-Emery liquid) !Spin-pairing and atomic-density waves in the presence of confinement !Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Density-functional theory: The Hohenberg-Kohn theorem

basic variable basic variable

1. The GS expectation value of every observable is a unique functional of the GS density 2. The GS density minimizes the total energy functional 3. The GS total energy functional can be written as

universal

Density-functional theory: The Kohn-Sham mapping

For any interacting system there exists a local single-particle potential such that the exact GS density of the interacting system equals the GS density of the auxiliary noninteracting system

we need to approximate ONLY the XC potential!

The local density approximation for the xc potential n2

n1
Vxc taken from the homogeneous electron liquid at that density

Vxc taken from the homogeneous electron liquid at that density

approximated, exactly known (e.g. 1D), or known from QMC

Outline
!Introduction and motivations Ultracold atoms and optical lattices Why are cold gases interesting? Bloch Oscillations, Vortices, and Quantum Phase Transitions !Rotating optical lattices, effective magnetic fields, and frustration !One-dimensional two-component attractive fermions on a lattice (and brief intro to the Luther-Emery liquid) !A reminder of density-functional theory (the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham mapping) !Spin-pairing and atomic-density waves in the presence of confinement !Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Density-functional theory for trapped Fermi gases

Two-component Fermi gases in a 1D optical lattice + trapping potential

exactly solvable by Bethe-Ansatz

E.H. Lieb and F.Y. Wu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1445 (1968)

Generic phase diagram for a 1D quantum fluid

Charge gapless Spin gapless

(Luttinger liquid)

Charge gapless Spin gapful

(Luther-Emery liquid)
T. Giamarchi, Quantum Physics in One Dimension (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004)

Spin-density and charge-density waves

Outline
!Introduction and motivations Ultracold atoms and optical lattices Why are cold gases interesting? Bloch Oscillations, Vortices, and Quantum Phase Transitions !Rotating optical lattices, effective magnetic fields, and frustration !One-dimensional two-component attractive fermions on a lattice (and brief intro to the Luther-Emery liquid) !A reminder of density-functional theory (the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the Kohn-Sham mapping) !Spin-pairing and atomic-density waves in the presence of confinement !Conclusions and Future Perspectives

Tendency to spin pairing

N N+1

N+2 N+1

thermodynamic limit in the presence of an harmonic trap

K. Damle et al., Europhys. Lett. 36, 7 (1996)

Ground-state site occupation for a 1D attractive Fermi gases

Ground-state site occupation in a strong harmonic potential

filled symbols LDA x DMRG data

Crossover from weak to strong coupling (emergence of atomic-density waves)

Crossover from weak to strong coupling (and their disappearance)

Observability of the atomic-density waves

Conclusions
1. 2. Ultracold atomic gases in low-dimensional geometries are of momentous experimental and theoretical interest (quest for the FFLO superfluid state) Quoting J.I. Cirac and P. Zoller, Science 301, 176 (2003), "in the strong interaction regime, atomic experiments may help us to understand several physical phenomena that have been predicted or observed in solid-state systems" Many cold atom systems constitute, already at this time, an ideal, highly-tunable, and controllable laboratory realization of many one-dimensional exactly-solvable models of condensed matter physics Density-functional theory and density-matrix renormalization-group techniques are ideal theoretical tools to study the interplay between interactions and inhomogeous external potentials in one-dimensional systems of interacting fermions References: Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 010401 (2005) Phys. Rev. A 73, 033609 (2006) Phys. Rev. B 73, 165120 (2006) Phys. Rev. B 73, 161103 (R) (2006) cond-mat/0609346

3.

4.