arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Frédéric Chevy.
Recent experiments with ultra-cold atoms have demonstrated the possibility of realizing experimentally fermionic superfluids with imbalanced spin populations. We discuss how these developments have shed a new light on a half- century old open problem in condensed matter physics, and raised new interrogations of their own.
We describe a powerful method for determining the equation of state of an ultracold gas from in situ images. The method provides a measurement of the local pressure of an harmonically trapped gas and we give several applications to Bose and Fermi gases. We obtain the grand-canonical equation of state of a spin-balanced Fermi gas with resonant interactions as a function of temperature. We compare our equation of state with an equation of state measured by the Tokyo group, that reveals a significant difference in the high-temperature regime. The normal phase, at low temperature, is well described by a Landau Fermi liquid model, and we observe a clear thermodynamic signature of the superfluid transition. In a second part we apply the same procedure to Bose gases. From a single image of a quasi ideal Bose gas we determine the equation of state from the classical to the condensed regime. Finally the method is applied to a Bose gas in a 3D optical lattice in the Mott insulator regime. Our equation of state directly reveals the Mott insulator behavior and is suited to investigate finite-temperature effects.
Recent experiments on imbalanced Fermi gases have raised interest in the physics of an impurity immersed in a Fermi sea, the so-called Fermi polaron. In this letter, a simple theory is devised to describe dilute Fermi-polaron ensembles corresponding to the normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas. An exact formula is obtained for the dominant interaction between polarons, expressed solely in terms of a single polaron parameter. The physics of this interaction is identified as a signature of the Pauli exclusion principle.
From sand piles to electrons in metals, one of the greatest challenges in modern physics is to understand the behavior of an ensemble of strongly interacting particles. A class of quantum many-body systems such as neutron matter and cold Fermi gases share the same universal thermodynamic properties when interactions reach the maximum effective value allowed by quantum mechanics, the so-called unitary limit [1,2]. It is then possible to simulate some astrophysical phenomena inside the highly controlled environment of an atomic physics laboratory. Previous work on the thermodynamics of a two-component Fermi gas led to thermodynamic quantities averaged over the trap [3-5], making it difficult to compare with many-body theories developed for uniform gases. Here we develop a general method that provides for the first time the equation of state of a uniform gas, as well as a detailed comparison with existing theories [6,14]. The precision of our equation of state leads to new physical insights on the unitary gas. For the unpolarized gas, we prove that the low-temperature thermodynamics of the strongly interacting normal phase is well described by Fermi liquid theory and we localize the superfluid transition. For a spin-polarized system, our equation of state at zero temperature has a 2% accuracy and it extends the work of [15] on the phase diagram to a new regime of precision. We show in particular that, despite strong correlations, the normal phase behaves as a mixture of two ideal gases: a Fermi gas of bare majority atoms and a non-interacting gas of dressed quasi-particles, the fermionic polarons [10,16-18].
Interacting fermions are ubiquitous in nature and understanding their thermodynamics is an important problem. We measure the equation of state of a two-component ultracold Fermi gas for a wide range of interaction strengths at low temperature. A detailed comparison with theories including Monte-Carlo calculations and the Lee-Huang-Yang corrections for low-density bosonic and fermionic superfluids is presented. The low-temperature phase diagram of the spin imbalanced gas reveals Fermi liquid behavior of the partially polarized normal phase for all but the weakest interactions. Our results provide a benchmark for many-body theories and are relevant to other fermionic systems such as the crust of neutron stars.
In this paper we present a theoretical investigation for the ground state of an impurity immersed in a Fermi sea. The molecular regime is considered where a two-body bound state between the impurity and one of the fermions is formed. Both interaction and exchange of the bound fermion take place between the dimer and the Fermi sea. We develop a formalism based on a two channel model allowing us to expand systematically the ground state energy of this immersed dimer with the scattering length $a$. Working up to order $a^3$, associated to the creation of two particle-hole pairs, reveals the first signature of the composite nature of the bosonic dimer. Finally, a complementary variational study provides an accurate estimate of the dimer energy even at large scattering length.
We investigate the low-lying compression modes of a unitary Fermi gas with imbalanced spin populations. For low polarization, the strong coupling between the two spin components leads to a hydrodynamic behavior of the cloud. For large population imbalance we observe a decoupling of the oscillations of the two spin components, giving access to the effective mass of the Fermi polaron, a quasi-particle composed of an impurity dressed by particle-hole pair excitations in a surrounding Fermi sea. We find $m^*/m=1.17(10)$, in agreement with the most recent theoretical predictions.
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the capillary-gravity waves created by a small object moving steadily at the water-air interface along a circular trajectory. It is well established that, for straight uniform motion, no steady waves appear at velocities below the minimum phase velocity $c_{min} = 23 \rm{cm \cdot s}^{-1}$. We show theoretically that no such velocity threshold exists for a steady circular motion, for which, even at small velocities, a finite wave drag is experienced by the object. This wave drag originates from the emission of a spiral-like wave pattern. Our results are in good agreement with direct experimental observations of the wave pattern created by a circularly moving needle in contact with water. Our study leads to new insights into the problem of animal locomotion at the water-air interface.
Although recent theoretical and experimental progress have considerably clarified pairing mechanisms in spin 1/2 fermionic superfluid with equally populated internal states, many open questions remain when the two spin populations are mismatched. We show here that, taking advantage of the universal behavior characterizing the regime of infinite scattering length, the macroscopic properties of these systems can be simply and quantitatively understood in the regime of strong interactions.
We present an experimental study of the time of flight properties of a gas of ultra-cold fermions in the BEC-BCS crossover. Since interactions can be tuned by changing the value of the magnetic field, we are able to probe both non interacting and strongly interacting behaviors. These measurements allow us to characterize the momentum distribution of the system as well as its equation of state. We also demonstrate the breakdown of superfluid hydrodynamics in the weakly attractive region of the phase diagram, probably caused by pair breaking taking place during the expansion.
We present a theoretical interpretation of a recent experiment presented in ref. \cite{Zwierlein06} on the density profile of Fermi gases with unbalanced spin populations. We show that in the regime of strong interaction, the boundaries of the three phases observed in \cite{Zwierlein06} can be characterized by two dimensionless numbers $η\_α$ and $η\_β$. Using a combination of a variational treatment and a study of the experimental results, we infer rather precise bounds for these two parameters.
We present a theoretical study of the density profile of a trapped strongly interacting Fermi gas with unbalanced spin populations. Making the assumption of the existence of a first order phase transition between an unpolarized superfluid phase and a fully polarized normal phase, we show good agreement with a recent experiment presented in Partridge et al.
We present a calculation of the low lying spectrum of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that in a cylindrical geometry, there exist two linear branches, one associated to usual acoustic excitation, the other corresponding to a twisting mode of the vortex lattice. Using a hydrodynamical approach we derive the elasticity coefficient of the vortex lattice and calculate the spectrum of condensate in a three dimensionnal harmonic trap with cylindrical symmetry.
We present a semi-analytical treatment of both the elastic and inelastic collisional properties near a p-wave Feshbach resonance. Our model is based on a simple three channel system that reproduces more elaborate coupled-channel calculations. We stress the main differences between s-wave and p-wave scattering. We show in particular that, for elastic and inelastic scattering close to a p-wave Feshbach resonance, resonant processes dominate over the low-energy behaviour.