Georg M. Bruun

Metastability and coherence of repulsive polarons in a strongly interacting Fermi mixture

Ultracold Fermi gases with tunable interactions provide a test bed for exploring the many-body physics of strongly interacting quantum systems. Over the past decade, experiments have investigated many intriguing phenomena, and precise measurements of ground-state properties have provided benchmarks for the development of theoretical descriptions. Metastable states in Fermi gases with strong repulsive interactions represent an exciting area of development. The realization of such systems is challenging, because a strong repulsive interaction in an atomic quantum gas implies the existence of a weakly bound molecular state, which makes the system intrinsically unstable against decay. Here we use radio-frequency spectroscopy to measure the complete excitation spectrum of fermionic 40K impurities resonantly interacting with a Fermi sea of 6Li atoms. In particular, we show that a well-defined quasiparticle exists for strongly repulsive interactions. We measure the energy and the lifetime of this ‘repulsive polaron’, and probe its coherence properties by measuring the quasiparticle residue. The results are well described by a theoretical approach that takes into account the finite effective range of the interaction in our system. We find that when the effective range is of the order of the interparticle spacing, there is a substantial increase in the lifetime of the quasiparticles. The existence of such a long-lived, metastable many-body state offers intriguing prospects for the creation of exotic quantum phases in ultracold, repulsively interacting Fermi gases.

Polarons, dressed molecules and itinerant ferromagnetism in ultracold Fermi gases

In this review, we discuss the properties of a few impurity atoms immersed in a gas of ultracold fermions--the so-called Fermi polaron problem. On one hand, this many-body system is appealing because it can be described almost exactly with simple diagrammatic and/or variational theoretical approaches. On the other, it provides a quantitatively reliable insight into the phase diagram of strongly interacting population-imbalanced quantum mixtures. In particular, we show that the polaron problem can be applied to the study of itinerant ferromagnetism, a long-standing problem in quantum mechanics.

Observation of Attractive and Repulsive Polarons in a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

The problem of an impurity particle moving through a bosonic medium plays a fundamental role in physics. However, the canonical scenario of a mobile impurity immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) has not yet been realized. Here, we use radio frequency spectroscopy of ultracold bosonic ^{39}K atoms to experimentally demonstrate the existence of a well-defined quasiparticle state of an impurity interacting with a BEC. We measure the energy of the impurity both for attractive and repulsive interactions, and find excellent agreement with theories that incorporate three-body correlations, both in the weak-coupling limits and across unitarity. The spectral response consists of a well-defined quasiparticle peak at weak coupling, while for increasing interaction strength, the spectrum is strongly broadened and becomes dominated by the many-body continuum of excited states. Crucially, no significant effects of three-body decay are observed. Our results open up exciting prospects for studying mobile impurities in a bosonic environment and strongly interacting Bose systems in general.

Quasiparticle Properties of a Mobile Impurity in a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

We develop a systematic perturbation theory for the quasiparticle properties of a single impurity immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Analytical results are derived for the impurity energy, effective mass, and residue to third order in the impurity-boson scattering length. The energy is shown to depend logarithmically on the scattering length to third order, whereas the residue and the effective mass are given by analytical power series. When the boson-boson scattering length equals the boson-impurity scattering length, the energy has the same structure as that of a weakly interacting Bose gas, including terms of the Lee-Huang-Yang and fourth order logarithmic form. Our results, which cannot be obtained within the canonical Fröhlich model of an impurity interacting with phonons, provide valuable benchmarks for many-body theories and for experiments.

Impurity in a Bose-Einstein Condensate and the Efimov Effect.

We investigate the zero-temperature properties of an impurity particle interacting with a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), using a variational wave function that includes up to two Bogoliubov excitations of the BEC. This allows one to capture three-body Efimov physics, as well as to recover the first nontrivial terms in the weak-coupling expansion. We show that the energy and quasiparticle residue of the dressed impurity (polaron) are significantly lowered by three-body correlations, even for weak interactions where there is no Efimov trimer state in a vacuum. For increasing attraction between the impurity and the BEC, we observe a smooth crossover from atom to Efimov trimer, with a superposition of states near the Efimov resonance. We furthermore demonstrate that three-body loss does not prohibit the experimental observation of these effects. Our results thus suggest a route to realizing Efimov physics in a stable quantum many-body system for the first time.

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 nontrivial 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.

Hydrodynamic Excitations of Trapped Fermi Gases

We discuss collective excitations of a trapped dilute Fermi gas within a hydrodynamic approximation. Analytical results are derived for both high- and low-temperature limits and are applied to

Repulsive polarons and itinerant ferromagnetism in strongly polarized Fermi gases

{}^{40}\mathrm{K}

Spin diffusion in Fermi gases

and

Bosonic and fermionic dipoles on a ring.

{}^{6}\mathrm{Li}