arXiv subjects

Randall G. Hulet

Publications and source records attributed to Randall G. Hulet.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory for one-dimensional attractive Fermi gases

The one-dimensional (1D) Yang-Gaudin model-an integrable $δ$-function interacting Fermi gas, serves as a paradigm in quantum many-body physics, encompassing phenomena from spin-charge separation to the Luther-Emery liquid. However, a consistent description of the Luther-Emery liquid and the bosonization of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-like pairing states in the 1D attractive Fermi gas remains elusive. In this work, we develop a universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory to describe the FFLO state across both weak and strong coupling regimes. We rigorously derive the low-energy effective Hamiltonian using bosonization, revealing the emergence of a two-component Luttinger liquid: one exhibiting spin-charge coupling in the weakly attractive regime, and another featuring charge-charge separation in the strongly attractive regime. For the weakly attractive regime, we further derive the renormalization-group equations for the sine-Gordon term in the spin sector and show that this term undergoes a relevant-irrelevant phase transition driven by the magnetic field. For the strongly attractive regime, we analyze the dynamical correlation functions of the FFLO pairing state based on the derived effective Hamiltonian. Finally, we propose an experimental scheme using ultracold atoms to verify the Luther-Emery liquid behavior and the subtle phenomena of spin-charge coupling and charge-charge separation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Low Energy Excitations of a 1D Fermi Gas with Attractive Interactions

The low-energy excitations of a two-component repulsive Fermi gas confined to one dimension are linear dispersing spin- and charge-density waves whose respective propagation velocities depend on the strength and sign of their interaction. Quasi-1D fermions with attractive interaction realize the Luther-Emery liquid, which exhibits a rich array of phenomena, many of which are qualitatively different from those exhibited by their repulsive counterpart. We use a Feshbach resonance to access attractive interactions with $^6$Li atoms. We measured the spin and charge dynamic structure factors using Bragg spectroscopy and find that, contrary to repulsive interactions, the spin wave propagates faster than the charge density wave, thus producing an inversion of the classic spin-charge separation. We also find that a small spin polarization strongly suppresses the spin gap in the measured Bragg spectra. Evidence for pairing are a reduction in spin correlations with increasing attraction and RF spectra consistent with an atom/molecule mixture.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Platforms for the realization and characterization of Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids

The concept of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) has been established as a fundamental theory for the understanding of one-dimensional quantum systems. Originally formulated as a replacement for Landau's Fermi-liquid theory, which accurately predicts the behaviour of most 3D metals but fails dramatically in 1D, the TLL description applies to a even broader class of 1D systems,including bosons and anyons. After a certain number of theoretical breakthroughs, its descriptive power has now been confirmed experimentally in different experimental platforms. They extend from organic conductors, carbon nanotubes, quantum wires, topological edge states of quantum spin Hall insulators to cold atoms, Josephson junctions, Bose liquids confined within 1D nanocapillaries and spin chains. In the ground state of such systems, quantum fluctuations become correlated on all length scales, but, counter-intuitively, no long-range order exists. In this respect, this review will illustrate the validity of conformal field theory for describing real-world systems, establishing the boundaries for its application and, on the other side will discuss the spectacular demonstration of how the quantum-critical TLL state governs the properties of many-body systems in one dimension.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Thermal disruption of a Luttinger liquid

The Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory describes the low-energy excitations of strongly correlated one-dimensional (1D) fermions. In the past years, a number of studies have provided a detailed understanding of this universality class. More recently, theoretical investigations that go beyond the standard low-temperature, linear-response, TLL regime have been developed. While these provide a basis for understanding the dynamics of the spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid, there are few experimental investigations in this regime. Here we report the observation of a thermally-induced, spin-incoherent Luttinger liquid in a $^6$Li atomic Fermi gas confined to 1D. We use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the suppression of spin-charge separation and the decay of correlations as the temperature is increased. Our results probe the crossover between the coherent and incoherent regimes of the Luttinger liquid, and elucidate the roles of the charge and the spin degrees of freedom in this regime.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Spin-charge separation in a 1D Fermi gas with tunable interactions

Ultracold atoms confined to periodic potentials have proven to be a powerful tool for quantum simulation of complex many-body systems. We confine fermions to one-dimension to realize the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid model describing the highly collective nature of their low-energy excitations. We use Bragg spectroscopy to directly excite either the spin or charge wave for various strength of repulsive interaction. We observe that the velocity of the spin and charge excitations shift in opposite directions with increasing interaction, a hallmark of spin-charge separation. The excitation spectra are in quantitative agreement with the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theory, and furthermore, we find that the spin excitations become dispersive at large interaction, signaling the onset of the nonlinear Luttinger liquid regime.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Quantum fluctuations of the center-of-mass and relative parameters of NLS breathers

We study quantum fluctuations of macroscopic parameters of an NLS breathers, i.e., the second-order soliton solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Uncertainty relations for the parameters are derived and compared to similar relations for fundamental solitons. We compare two models for the state of the quantum field of fluctuations surrounding the classical field of the Bose-Einstein condensate: a conventionally used, computationally convenient "white noise", and a correlated noise which assumes that the breather has been created from a fundamental soliton, by means of the application of the factor-of-four quench of the nonlinearity strength. Theoretical methods used in the work are well suited for a large number of particles, $N$. We thus confirm the possibility of experimental observation of macroscopic quantum fluctuations, which is suggested by an extrapolation to large $N$ of recently reported low-$N$ Bethe-ansatz results [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119 220401 (2017)].

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Collisional loss of one-dimensional fermions near a $p$-wave Feshbach resonance

We study collisional loss of a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) spin-polarized Fermi gas near a $p$-wave Feshbach resonance in ultracold $^6$Li atoms. We measure the location of the $p$-wave resonance in quasi-1D and observe a confinement-induced shift and broadening. We find that the three-body loss coefficient $L_3$ as a function of the quasi-1D confinement has little dependence on confinement strength. We also analyze the atom loss with a two-step cascade three-body loss model in which weakly bound dimers are formed prior to their loss arising from atom-dimer collisions. Our data are consistent with this model. We also find a possible suppression in the rate of dimer relaxation with strong quasi-1D confinement. We discuss the implications of these measurements for observing $p$-wave pairing in quasi-1D.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2020

Spin-imbalanced ultracold Fermi gases in a two-dimensional array of tubes

Motivated by a recent experiment [Revelle et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 235301 (2016)] that characterized the one- to three-dimensional crossover in a spin-imbalanced ultracold gas of $^6$Li atoms trapped in a two-dimensional array of tunnel-coupled tubes, we calculate the phase diagram for this system using Hartree-Fock Bogoliubov-de Gennes mean-field theory, and compare the results with experimental data. Mean-field theory predicts fully spin-polarized normal, partially spin-polarized normal, spin-polarized superfluid, and spin-balanced superfluid phases in a homogeneous system. We use the local density approximation to obtain density profiles of the gas in a harmonic trap. We compare these calculations with experimental measurements in Revelle {\em et al.} as well as previously unpublished data. Our calculations qualitatively agree with experimentally-measured densities and coordinates of the phase boundaries in the trap, and quantitatively agree with experimental measurements at moderate-to-large polarizations. Our calculations also reproduce the experimentally-observed universal scaling of the phase boundaries for different scattering lengths at a fixed value of scaled inter-tube tunneling. However, our calculations have quantitative differences with experimental measurements at low polarization, and fail to capture important features of the one- to three-dimensional crossover observed in experiments. These suggest the important role of physics beyond-mean-field theory in the experiments. We expect that our numerical results will aid future experiments in narrowing the search for the FFLO phase.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Thermodynamics and magnetism in the 2D-3D crossover of the Hubbard model

The realization of antiferromagnetic (AF) correlations in ultracold fermionic atoms on an optical lattice is a significant achievement. Experiments have been carried out in one, two, and three dimensions, and have also studied anisotropic configurations with stronger tunneling in some lattice directions. Such anisotropy is relevant to the physics of cuprate superconductors and other strongly correlated materials. Moreover, this anisotropy might be harnessed to enhance AF order. Here we numerically investigate, using Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo, a simple realization of anisotropy in the 3D Hubbard model in which the tunneling between planes, $t_\perp$, is unequal to the intraplane tunneling $t$. This model interpolates between the three-dimensional isotropic ($t_\perp = t$) and two-dimensional ($t_\perp =0$) systems. We show that at fixed interaction strength to tunneling ratio ($U/t$), anisotropy can enhance the magnetic structure factor relative to both 2D and 3D results. However, this enhancement occurs at interaction strengths below those for which the Néel temperature $T_{\rm N\acute{e}el}$ is largest, in such a way that the structure factor cannot be made to exceed its value in isotropic 3D systems at the optimal $U/t$. We characterize the 2D-3D crossover in terms of the magnetic structure factor, real space spin correlations, number of doubly-occupied sites, and thermodynamic observables. An interesting implication of our results stems from the entropy's dependence on anisotropy. As the system evolves from 3D to 2D, the entropy at a fixed temperature increases. Correspondingly, at fixed entropy, the temperature will decrease going from 3D to 2D. This suggests a cooling protocol in which the dimensionality is adiabatically changed from 3D to 2D.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Emergence and disruption of spin-charge separation in one-dimensional repulsive fermions

At low temperature, collective excitations of one-dimensional (1D) interacting fermions exhibit spin-charge separation, a unique feature predicted by the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) theory, but a rigorous understanding remains challenging. Using the thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) formalism, we analytically derive universal properties of a 1D repulsive spin-1/2 Fermi gas with arbitrary interaction strength. We show how spin-charge separation emerges from the exact TBA formalism, and how it is disrupted by the interplay between the two degrees of freedom which brings us beyond the TLL paradigm. Based on the exact low-lying excitation spectra, we further evaluate the spin and charge dynamical structure factors (DSFs). The peaks of the DSFs exhibit distinguishable propagating velocities of spin and charge as functions of interaction strength, which can be observed by Bragg spectroscopy with ultracold atoms.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Methods for Preparing Quantum Gases of Lithium

Lithium is an important element in atomic quantum gas experiments because its interactions are highly tunable, due to broad Feshbach resonances and zero-crossings, and because it has two stable isotopes, $^6$Li, a fermion, and $^7$Li, a boson. Although lithium has special value for these reasons, it also presents experimental challenges. In this article, we review some of the methods that have been developed or adapted to confront these challenges, including beam and vapor sources, Zeeman slowers, sub-Doppler laser cooling, laser sources at 671 nm, and all-optical methods for trapping and cooling. Additionally, we provide spectral diagrams of both $^6$Li and $^7$Li, and present plots of Feshbach resonances for both isotopes.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2019

Quantum Simulators: Architectures and Opportunities

Quantum simulators are a promising technology on the spectrum of quantum devices from specialized quantum experiments to universal quantum computers. These quantum devices utilize entanglement and many-particle behaviors to explore and solve hard scientific, engineering, and computational problems. Rapid development over the last two decades has produced more than 300 quantum simulators in operation worldwide using a wide variety of experimental platforms. Recent advances in several physical architectures promise a golden age of quantum simulators ranging from highly optimized special purpose simulators to flexible programmable devices. These developments have enabled a convergence of ideas drawn from fundamental physics, computer science, and device engineering. They have strong potential to address problems of societal importance, ranging from understanding vital chemical processes, to enabling the design of new materials with enhanced performance, to solving complex computational problems. It is the position of the community, as represented by participants of the NSF workshop on "Programmable Quantum Simulators," that investment in a national quantum simulator program is a high priority in order to accelerate the progress in this field and to result in the first practical applications of quantum machines. Such a program should address two areas of emphasis: (1) support for creating quantum simulator prototypes usable by the broader scientific community, complementary to the present universal quantum computer effort in industry; and (2) support for fundamental research carried out by a blend of multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary collaborations with resources for quantum simulator software, hardware, and education.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Splitting of nonlinear-Schrödinger breathers by linear and nonlinear localized potentials

We consider evolution of one-dimensional nonlinear-Schrödinger (NLS) two-soliton complexes (breathers) with narrow repulsive or attractive potentials (barrier or well, respectively). By means of systematic simulations, we demonstrate that the breather may either split into constituent fundamental solitons (fragments) moving in opposite directions, or bounce as a whole from the barrier. A critical initial position of the breather, which separates these scenarios, is predicted by an analytical approximation. The narrow potential well tends to trap the fragment with the larger amplitude, while the other one escapes. The interaction of the breather with a nonlinear potential barrier is also considered. The ratio of amplitudes of the emerging free solitons may be different from the 3:1 value suggested by the exact NLS solution, especially in the case of the nonlinear potential barrier. Post-splitting velocities of escaping solitons may be predicted by an approximation based on the energy balance.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2017

Dissociation of one-dimensional matter-wave breathers due to quantum many-body effects

We use the ab initio Bethe Ansatz dynamics to predict the dissociation of one-dimensional cold-atom breathers that are created by a quench from a fundamental soliton. We find that the dissociation is a robust quantum many-body effect, while in the mean-field (MF) limit the dissociation is forbidden by the integrability of the underlying nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The analysis demonstrates the possibility to observe quantum many-body effects without leaving the MF range of experimental parameters. We find that the dissociation time is of the order of a few seconds for a typical atomic-soliton setting.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2017

Formation of matter-wave soliton trains by modulational instability

Nonlinear systems can exhibit a rich set of dynamics that are inherently sensitive to their initial conditions. One such example is modulational instability, which is believed to be one of the most prevalent instabilities in nature. By exploiting a shallow zero-crossing of a Feshbach resonance, we characterize modulational instability and its role in the formation of matter-wave soliton trains from a Bose-Einstein condensate. We examine the universal scaling laws exhibited by the system, and through real-time imaging, address a long-standing question of whether the solitons in trains are created with effectively repulsive nearest neighbor interactions, or rather, evolve into such a structure.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Correlations generated from high-temperature states: nonequilibrium dynamics in the Fermi-Hubbard model

We study interaction quenches of the Fermi-Hubbard model initiated from various high-temperature and high-energy states, motivated by cold atom experiments, which currently operate above the ordering temperature(s). We analytically calculate the dynamics for quenches from these initial states, which are often strongly-interacting, to the non-interacting limit. Even for high-temperature uncorrelated initial states, transient connected correlations develop. These correlations share many features for all considered initial states. We observe light-cone spreading of intertwined spin and density correlations. The character of these correlations is quite different from their low-temperature equilibrium counterparts: for example, the spin correlations can be ferromagnetic. We also show that an initially localized hole defect affects spin correlations near the hole, suppressing their magnitude and changing their sign.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

1D to 3D Crossover of a Spin-Imbalanced Fermi Gas

We have characterized the one-dimensional (1D) to three-dimensional (3D) crossover of a two-component spin-imbalanced Fermi gas of 6-lithium atoms in a 2D optical lattice by varying the lattice tunneling and the interactions. The gas phase separates, and we detect the phase boundaries using in situ imaging of the inhomogeneous density profiles. The locations of the phases are inverted in 1D as compared to 3D, thus providing a clear signature of the crossover. By scaling the tunneling rate with respect to the pair binding energy, we observe a collapse of the data to a universal crossover point at a scaled tunneling value of 0.025(7).

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2015

Antiferromagnetism with Ultracold Atoms

We use ultracold spin--1/2 atomic fermions ($^6$Li) to realize the Hubbard model on a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice. At relatively high temperatures and at densities near half-filling, we show that the gas forms a Mott insulator with unordered spins. To observe antiferromagnetic order that is predicted to occur at lower temperatures, we developed the compensated optical lattice method to evaporatively cool atoms in the lattice. This cooling has enabled the detection of short-range magnetic order by spin-sensitive Bragg scattering of light.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗