arXiv subjects

Brendan C. Mulkerin

Publications and source records attributed to Brendan C. Mulkerin.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Light-enhanced dipolar interactions between exciton polaritons

We consider the scenario of excitons in a semiconductor bilayer that are strongly coupled to cavity photons, leading to the formation of dipolar exciton polaritons (dipolaritons). Using a realistic pseudopotential for the dipolar interactions, we exactly determine the scattering between dipolaritons, accounting for the hybridization between interlayer and intralayer excitons. Similar to conventional non-dipolar polaritons, we find that the light-matter coupling enhances the interactions between dipolaritons by forcing excitons to scatter at energies that would otherwise be forbidden in ordinary exciton-exciton collisions. However, we show that this light enhancement is larger for long-range dipolar interactions than for short-range intralayer interactions, and is sensitive to the (non-uniform) dielectric environment of the bilayer. Crucially, we find that the largest dipolariton interactions are achieved for transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers in vacuum. Our results thus reveal the optimal dipolariton setup for realizing strong photon correlations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Optical properties of Fermi polarons in a GaInP/MoSe2 monolayer heterostructure

Engineering optical properties, such as luminescence purity and charge transfer, is crucial for harnessing the application potential of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). While electrostatic gating is widely applied to gain charge control in TMDC monolayers, charge transfer can also be engineered via coupling of TMDC monolayers at semiconductor III/V, organic, or van der Waals interfaces. This confers great advantages, such as ease in implementation and compatibility in device integration. Here, we shed light on the optical properties of many-particle complexes emerging at the GaInP/MoSe2 interface as a highly relevant material combination to manipulate the optical properties of TMDCs in integrated photonic devices. Our study verifies its nature as a type II hetero-interface, which bears the feasibility to display disorder-free photoluminescence. Through optical absorption measurements, we verify that the charged complexes acquire substantial oscillator strength. Furthermore, temperature-dependent photoluminescence, supported by a microscopic theory framework, evidences the suppression of the characteristic carrier recoil effect that was previously observed in the photoluminescence of trions in TMDCs. These phenomena allow us to identify the optical signatures at the TMDC-GaInP interface as Fermi polaron quasiparticle resonances, which are of high importance in researching Bose-Fermi mixtures in condensed matter systems.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Scattering resonances and pairing in a Rabi-coupled Fermi gas

We investigate the possibility of using a Rabi drive to tune the interactions in an atomic Fermi gas. Specifically, we consider the scenario where two fermion species (spins) are Rabi coupled and interacting with a third uncoupled species. Using an exact calculation within a minimal low-energy model, we derive analytical expressions for the effective scattering length and effective range that characterize the collisions between a Rabi-dressed atom and an atom from the third species. In particular, we find that new scattering resonances emerge in the Rabi-coupled system, which we demonstrate are linked to the existence of hybrid two-body bound states. Furthermore, we show via a generalized Thouless criterion that the scattering properties have a direct impact on the superfluid transitions in the Rabi-coupled Fermi gas. The presence of Rabi-induced resonances thus has implications for the investigation of many-body physics with driven atomic gases.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Hybrid-pair superfluidity in a strongly driven Fermi gas

We explore the paired superfluid phases of a Fermi gas in the presence of a continuous Rabi drive. We focus on the case where two components are strongly coupled by the drive, forming hybrid superpositions, and interacting with an uncoupled third component. Using a generalized Bardeen- Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) ansatz, we show that there are two coupled superfluid order parameters, and we obtain the associated free energy and quasiparticle excitation spectrum. We find that we can drive BCS-BCS, BCS-Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and BEC-BEC crossovers purely by varying the detuning of the Rabi drive from the bare transition, with the precise crossover depending on the sign of the underlying interactions between the coupled and uncoupled components. We furthermore identify an exotic excited branch which features both normal to BCS superfluid transitions, as well as a BCS-BEC-BCS crossover. Introducing a generalized Thouless criterion, we show that this behavior is reflected in the critical temperature for superfluidity. Our Rabi-coupled scenario also gives possesses additional thermodynamic properties related to the pseudospin of the coupled components, which provide novel signatures of the state of the many-body system. The Rabi-driven Fermi gas thus emerges as a unique platform for engineering and probing a rich array of multi-band superfluid phases.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Universal Efimov Scaling in the Rabi-Coupled Few-Body Spectrum

We investigate the behavior of the Efimov effect -- a universal quantum few-body phenomenon -- in the presence of an external driving field. Specifically, we consider up to three bosonic atoms, such as $^{133}$Cs, interacting with a light atom, such as $^{6}$Li, where the latter has two internal spin states $\{\uparrow, \downarrow\}$ that are Rabi coupled. Assuming that only the spin-$\uparrow$ light atom interacts with the bosons, we find that the Rabi drive transposes the entire Efimov spectrum such that the Efimov trimers and tetramers are centered around the Rabi-shifted two-body scattering resonance. Crucially, we show that the Rabi drive preserves the trimers' discrete scaling symmetry, while universally shifting the Efimov three-body parameter, leading to a log-periodic modulation in the spectrum as the Rabi drive is varied. Our results suggest that Efimov physics can be conveniently explored using an applied driving field, opening up the prospect of an externally tunable three-body parameter.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Energetic and Structural Properties of Two-Dimensional Trapped Mesoscopic Fermi Gases

We theoretically investigate equal-mass spin-balanced two-component Fermi gases in which pairs of atoms with opposite spins interact via a short-range isotropic model potential. We probe the distinction between two-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional harmonic confinement by tuning the effective range parameter within two-dimensional scattering theory. Our approach, which yields numerically exact energetic and structural properties, combines a correlated Gaussian basis-set expansion with the stochastic variational method. For systems containing up to six particles, we: 1) Present the ground- and excited-state energy spectra; 2) Study non-local correlations by analysing the one- and two-body density matrices, extracting from these the occupation numbers of the natural orbitals, the momentum distributions of atoms and pairs, and the molecular 'condensate fraction'; 3) Study local correlations by computing the radial and pair distribution functions. This paper extends current theoretical knowledge on the properties of trapped few-fermion systems as realised in state-of-the-art cold-atom experiments.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Efficient calculation of trion energies in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

The reduced dielectric screening in atomically thin semiconductors leads to remarkably strong electron interactions. As a result, bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) and charged excitons (trions), which have binding energies in the hundreds and tens of meV, respectively, typically dominate the optical properties of these materials. However, the long-range nature of the interactions between charges represents a significant challenge to the exact calculation of binding energies of complexes larger than the exciton. Here, we demonstrate that the trion binding energy can be efficiently calculated directly from the three-body Schrödinger equation in momentum space. Key to this result is a highly accurate way of treating the pole of the electronic interactions at small momentum exchange (i.e., large separation between charges) via the Landé subtraction method. Our results are in excellent agreement with quantum Monte Carlo calculations, while yielding a substantially larger ratio of the trion to exciton binding energies than obtained in recent variational calculations. Our numerical approach may be extended to a host of different few-body problems in 2D semiconductors, and even potentially to the description of exciton polarons.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

When does a Fermi puddle become a Fermi sea? Emergence of pairing in two-dimensional trapped mesoscopic Fermi gases

Pairing lies at the heart of superfluidity in fermionic systems. Motivated by recent experiments in mesoscopic Fermi gases, we study up to six fermionic atoms with equal masses and equal populations in two different spin states, confined in a quasi-two-dimensional harmonic trap. We couple a stochastic variational approach with the use of an explicitly correlated Gaussian basis set, which enables us to obtain highly accurate energies and structural properties. Utilising two-dimensional two-body scattering theory with a finite-range Gaussian interaction potential, we tune the effective range to model realistic quasi-two-dimensional scattering. We calculate the excitation spectrum, pair correlation function, and number of pairs as a function of increasing attractive interaction strength. For up to six fermions in the ground state, we find that opposite spin and momentum pairing is maximised well below the Fermi surface in momentum space. By contrast, corresponding experiments on twelve fermions have found that pairing is maximal at the Fermi surface and strongly suppressed beneath [M. Holten et al., Nature 606, 287-291 (2022)]. This suggests that the Fermi sea $-$ which acts to suppress pairing at low momenta via Pauli blocking $-$ emerges in the transition from six to twelve particles.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Rabi oscillations and magnetization of a mobile spin-1/2 impurity in a Fermi sea

We investigate the behavior of a mobile spin-1/2 impurity atom immersed in a Fermi gas, where the interacting spin-$\uparrow$ and non-interacting spin-$\downarrow$ states of the impurity are Rabi coupled via an external field. This scenario resembles the classic problem of a two-state system interacting with a dissipative environment, but with an added dimension provided by the impurity momentum degree of freedom. In this case, the impurity can become "dressed" by excitations of the Fermi sea to form a Fermi polaron quasiparticle. For the steady-state system, where the impurity has thermalized with the medium, we derive exact thermodynamic relations that connect the impurity magnetization with quasiparticle properties such as the number of fermions in the dressing cloud. We show how the thermodynamic properties evolve with increasing Rabi coupling and we present exact analytical results in the limits of weak and strong Rabi coupling. For the dynamics of the Rabi-driven Fermi polaron, we formulate a theoretical approach based on correlation functions that respects conservation laws and allows the efficient calculation of Rabi oscillations for a range of time scales and impurity momenta beyond what has been achieved previously. Our results are in good agreement with recent experiments on the Rabi oscillations of the attractive polaron, and they reveal how the Rabi oscillations are influenced by the interplay between the polaron and its dressing cloud.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2023

Trion resonance in polariton-electron scattering

Strong interactions between charges and light-matter coupled quasiparticles offer an intriguing prospect with applications from optoelectronics to light-induced superconductivity. Here, we investigate how the interactions between electrons and exciton-polaritons in a two-dimensional semiconductor microcavity can be resonantly enhanced due to a strong coupling to a trion, i.e., an electron-exciton bound state. We develop a microscopic theory that uses a strongly screened interaction between charges to enable the summation of all possible diagrams in the polariton-electron scattering process. The position and magnitude of the resonance is found to vary depending on the values of the light-matter coupling and detuning, thus indicating a large degree of tunability. We furthermore derive an analytic approximation of the interaction strength based on universal lowenergy scattering theory. This is found to match extremely well with our full calculation, indicating that the trion resonance is near universal, depending more on the strength of the light-matter coupling relative to the trion binding energy rather than on the details of the electronic interactions. Thus, we expect the trion resonance in polariton-electron scattering to appear in a broad range of microcavity systems with few semiconductor layers, such as doped monolayer MoSe2 where such resonances have recently been observed experimentally [Sidler et al., Nature Physics 13, 255 (2017)].

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Quasi-equilibrium polariton condensates in the non-linear regime and beyond

We investigate the many-body behavior of polaritons formed from electron-hole pairs strongly coupled to photons in a two-dimensional semiconductor microcavity. We use a microscopic mean-field BCS theory that describes polariton condensation in quasi-equilibrium across the full range of excitation densities. In the limit of vanishing density, we show that our theory recovers the exact single-particle properties of polaritons, while at low densities it captures non-linear polariton-polariton interactions within the Born approximation. For the case of highly screened contact interactions between charge carriers, we obtain analytic expressions for the equation of state of the many-body system. This allows us to show that there is a photon resonance at a chemical potential higher than the photon cavity energy, where the electron-hole pair correlations in the polariton condensate become universal and independent of the details of the carrier interactions. Comparing the effect of different ranged interactions between charge carriers, we find that the Rytova-Keldysh potential (relevant to transition metal dichalcogenides) offers the best prospect of reaching the BCS regime, where pairs strongly overlap and the minimum pairing gap occurs at finite momentum. Finally, going beyond thermal equilibrium, we argue that there are generically two polariton branches in the driven-dissipative system and we discuss the possibility of a density-driven exceptional point within our model.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Pseudopotentials for Two-dimentional Ultracold Scattering in the Presence of Synthetic Spin-orbit-coupling

We derive a pseudopotential in two dimensions (2D) with the presence of a 2D Rashba spin-orbit-coupling (SOC), following the same spirit of frame transformation in {[}Phys. Rev. A 95, 020702(R) (2017){]}. The frame transformation correctly describes the non-trivial phase accumulation and partial wave couplings due to the presence of SOC and gives rise to a different pseudopotential than the free-space one, even when the length scale of SOC is significantly larger than the two-body potential range. As an application, we apply our pseudopotential with the Lippmann-Schwinger equation to obtain an analytical scattering matrix. To demonstrate the validity, we compare our results with a numerical scattering calculation of finite-range potential and show perfect agreement over a wide range of scattering energy and SOC strength. Our results also indicate that the differences between our pseudopotential and the original free-space pseudopotential are essential to reproduce scattering observables correctly.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Beyond Gaussian pair fluctuation theory for strongly interacting Fermi gases II: The broken-symmetry phase

We theoretically study the thermodynamic properties of a strongly interacting Fermi gas at the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), by applying a recently outlined strong-coupling theory that includes pair fluctuations beyond the commonly-used many-body $T$-matrix or ladder approximation at the Gaussian level. The beyond Gaussian pair fluctuation (GPF) theory always respects the exact thermodynamic relations and recovers the Bogoliubov theory of molecules in the BEC limit with a nearly correct molecule-molecule scattering length. We show that the beyond-GPF theory predicts quantitatively accurate ground-state properties at the BEC-BCS crossover, in good agreement with the recent measurement by Horikoshi \textit{et al.} in Phys. Rev. X \textbf{7}, 041004 (2017). In the unitary limit with infinitely large $s$-wave scattering length, the beyond-GPF theory predicts a reliable universal energy equation of state up to 0.6$T_c$, where $T_c$ is the superfluid transition temperature at unitarity. The theory predicts a Bertsch parameter $ξ\simeq 0.365$ at zero temperature, in good agreement with the latest quantum Monte Carlo result $ξ= 0.367(7)$ and the latest experimental measurement $ξ= 0.367(9)$. We attribute the excellent and wide applicability of the beyond-GPF theory in the broken-symmetry phase to the reasonable re-summation of Feynman diagrams following a dimensional $ε$-expansion analysis near four dimensions ($d=4-ε$), which gives rise to accurate predictions at the second order $\mathcal{O}(ε^2)$. Our work indicates the possibility of further improving the strong-coupling theory of strongly interacting fermions based on the systematic inclusion of large-loop Feynman diagrams at higher orders $\mathcal{O}(ε^n)$ with $n\ge 3$.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Stationary states, dynamical stability, and vorticity of Bose-Einstein condensates in tilted rotating harmonic traps

We theoretically investigate a Bose-Einstein condensate confined by a rotating harmonic trap whose rotation axis is not aligned with any of its principal axes. The principal axes of the Thomas-Fermi density profiles of the resulting stationary solutions are found to be tilted with respect to those of the rotating trap, representing an extra degree of freedom that is associated with the existence of additional branches of stationary solutions for any given rotation axis alignment. By linearizing the time-dependent theory about the stationary states, we obtain a semi-analytical prediction of their dynamical instability at high rotation frequencies against collective modes arising from environmental perturbations. Comparing the stationary states to direct simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we predict the nucleation of quantum vortices in the dynamically unstable rotational regime. These vortex lines are aligned along the rotation axis despite the tilting of the rotating trap although the background density profile is tilted with respect to the trapping and rotation axes.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Pseudogap regime of a strongly interacting two-dimensional Fermi gas with and without confinement-induced effect range of interactions

We investigate theoretically the many-body pairing of a strongly correlated two-dimensional Fermi gas with and without negative confinement-induced effective range. Using a strong-coupling effective field theory in the normal state, we show that the specific heat at constant volume can be used as a characteristic indicator of the crossover from the normal Fermi liquid to the pseudogap state in two dimensions. We calculate the pseudogap formation temperature through the specific heat at constant volume, examining the role of a negative confinement-induced effective range on many-body pairing above the superfluid transition. We compare our results with and without effective range to the recent experimental measurement performed with radio-frequency spectroscopy in Murthy et al.[Science359, 452-455 (2018)]. Although a good qualitative agreement is found, we are not able to discriminate the effect of the confinement-induced effect range in the experimental data.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Breakdown of the Fermi polaron description near Fermi degeneracy at unitarity

We theoretically investigate attractive Fermi polarons in three dimensions at finite temperature and impurity concentration through the many-body T-matrix theory and high-temperature virial expansion. By using the analytically continued impurity Green's function, we calculate the direct rf spectroscopy of attractive polarons in the unitary regime. Taking the peak value of the rf spectroscopy as the polaron energy and the full width half maximum as the polaron lifetime, we determine the temperature range of validity for the quasi-particle description of Fermi polarons in the unitary limit.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Role of the confinement-induced effective range on the thermodynamics of a strongly correlated Fermi gas in two dimensions

We theoretically investigate the thermodynamic properties of a strongly correlated two-dimensional Fermi gas with a confinement-induced negative effective range of interactions, which is described by a two-channel model Hamiltonian. By extending the many-body T-matrix approach by Nozières and Schmitt-Rink to the two-channel model, we calculate the equation of state in the normal phase and present several thermodynamic quantities as functions of temperature, interaction strength, and effective range. We find that there is a non-trivial dependence of thermodynamics on the effective range. In experiment, where the effective range is set by the tight axial confinement, the contribution of the effective range becomes non-negligible as the temperature decreases down to the degenerate temperature. We compare our finite-range results with recent measurements on the density equation of state, and show that the effective range has to be taken into account for the purpose of a quantitative understanding of the experimental data.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Vortex Lattice Formation in Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates via Rotation of the Polarization

The behaviour of a harmonically trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate with its dipole moments rotating at angular frequencies lower than the transverse harmonic trapping frequency is explored in the co-rotating frame. We obtain semi-analytical solutions for the stationary states in the Thomas-Fermi limit of the corresponding dipolar Gross-Pitaevskii equation and utilise linear stability analysis to elucidate a phase diagram for the dynamical stability of these stationary solutions with respect to collective modes. These results are verified via direct numerical simulations of the dipolar Gross-Pitaevskii equation, which demonstrate that dynamical instabilities of the co-rotating stationary solutions lead to the seeding of vortices that eventually relax into a triangular lattice configuration. Our results illustrate that rotation of the dipole polarization represents a new route to vortex formation in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗