arXiv subjects

Ren Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Ren Zhang.

51 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Confinement-induced Resonance of Alkaline-earth-metal-like Atoms in Anisotropic Quasi-one-dimensional Traps

We study the confinement-induced resonance (CIR) of $^{173}$Yb atoms near an orbital Feshbach resonance in a quasi-one-dimensional tube with transversal anisotropy. By solving the two-body scattering problem, we obtain the location of CIR for various anisotropy ratio and magnetic field. Our results show that the anisotropy of the trapping potential can serve as an additional knob to tune the location of CIR. In particular, one can shift the location of CIR to the region attainable in current experiment. We also study the energy spectrum of the system and analyze the properties of CIR from the perspective of bound states. We find that as the orbital Feshbach resonance acquires two nearly degenerate scattering channels, which in general have different threshold energies, CIR takes place when the closed channel bound state energy becomes degenerate with one of the thresholds.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Control of Spin-Exchange Interaction between Alkali-Earth Atoms via Confinement-Induced Resonances in a Quasi 1+0 Dimensional System

A nuclear-spin exchange interaction exists between two ultracold fermionic alkali-earth (like) atoms in the electronic $^{1}{\rm S}_{0}$ state ($g$-state) and $^{3}{\rm P}_{0}$ state ($e$-state), and is an essential ingredient for the quantum simulation of Kondo effect. We study the control of this spin-exchange interaction for two atoms simultaneously confined in a quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) tube, where the $g$-atom is freely moving in the axial direction while the $e$-atom is further localized by an additional axial trap and behaves as a quasi-zero-dimensional (quasi-0D) impurity. In this system, the two atoms experience effective-1D spin-exchange interactions in both even and odd partial wave channels, whose intensities can be controlled by the characteristic lengths of the confinements via the confinement-induced-resonances (CIRs). In current work, we go beyond that pure-1D approximation. We model the transverse and axial confinements by harmonic traps with finite characteristic lengths $a_\perp$ and $a_z$, respectively, and exactly solve the "quasi-1D + quasi-0D" scattering problem between these two atoms. Using the solutions we derive the effective 1D spin-exchange interaction and investigate the locations and widths of the even/odd wave CIRs for our system. It is found that when the ratio $a_z/a_\perp$ is larger, the CIRs can be induced by weaker confinements, which are easier to be realized experimentally. The comparison between our results and the recent experiment shows that the two experimentally observed resonance branches of the spin-exchange effect are due to an even-wave CIR and an odd-wave CIR, respectively. Our results are advantageous for the control and description of either the effective spin-exchange interaction or other types of interactions between ultracold atoms in quasi 1+0 dimensional systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2018

Emergent interlayer nodal superfluidity of a dipolar fermi gas in bilayer optical lattices

Understanding the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity is one of the central issues in condensed matter physics. Such interplay induced nodal structure of superconducting gap is widely believed to be a signature of exotic pairing mechanism (not phonon mediated) to achieve unconventional superconductivity, such as in heavy fermion, high $T_c$, and organic superconductors. Here we report a new mechanism to drive the interplay between magnetism and superfluidity via the spatially anisotropic interaction. This scheme frees up the usual requirement of suppressing long-range magnetic order to access unconventional superconductivity like through doping or adding pressure in solids. Surprisingly, even for the half-filling case, such scheme can lead the coexistence of superfluidity and antiferromagnetism and interestingly an unexpected interlayer nodal superfluid emerges, which will be demonstrated through a cold atom system composed of a pseudospin-$1/2$ dipolar fermi gas in bilayer optical lattices. Our mechanism should pave an alternative way to unveil exotic pairing scheme resulting from the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity or superfluidity.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2017

Universal Feature in Optical Control of a p-wave Feshbach Resonance

In this Letter we report the experimental results on optical control of a p-wave Feshbach resonance, by utilizing a laser driven bound-to-bound transition to shift the energy of closed channel molecule. The magnetic field location for p-wave resonance as a function of laser detuning can be captured by a simple formula with essentially one parameter, which describes how sensitive the resonance depends on the laser detuning. The key result of this work is to demonstrate, both experimentally and theoretically, that the ratio between this parameter for $m=0$ resonance and that for $m=\pm 1$ resonance, to large extent, is universal. We also show that this optical control can create intriguing situations where interesting few- and many-body physics can occurs, such as a p-wave resonance overlapping with an s-wave resonance or three p-wave resonances being degenerate.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2017

Enhancing Kondo Coupling in Alkaline-Earth Atomic Gases with Confinement-induced Resonances in Mixed Dimensions

The Kondo effect describes the spin-exchanging interaction between localized impurity and the itinerant fermions. The ultracold alkaline-earth atomic gas provides a natural platform for quantum simulation of the Kondo model, utilizing its long-lived clock state and the nuclear-spin exchanging interaction between the clock state and the ground state. One of the key issue now is whether the Kondo temperature can be high enough to be reached in current experiment, for which we have proposed using a transverse confinement to confine atoms into a one-dimensional tube and to utilize the confinement-induced resonance to enhance the Kondo coupling. In this work, we further consider the $1+0$ dimensional scattering problem when the clock state is further confined by an axial harmonic confinement. We show that this axial confinement for the clock state atoms not only plays a role for localizing them, but also can act as an additional control knob to reach the confinement-induced resonance. We show that by combining both the transverse and the axial confinements, the confinement-induced resonance can be reached in the practical conditions and the Kondo effect can be attainable in this system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Quantum Defect Theory for Orbital Feshbach Resonance

In the ultracold gases of alkali-earth (like) atoms, a new type of Feshbach resonance, i.e., the orbital Feshbach resonance (OFR), has been proposed and experimentally observed in ultracold $^{173}$Yb atoms. When the OFR of the $^{173}$Yb atoms occurs, the energy gap between the open and closed channels is smaller by two orders of magnitudes than the van der Waals energy. As a result, quantitative accurate results for the low-energy two-body problems can be obtained via multi-channel quantum defect theory (MQDT), which is based on the exact solution of the Schr$\ddot{\rm o}$dinger equation with the van der Waals potential. In this paper we use the MQDT to calculate the two-atom scattering length, effective range, and the binding energy of two-body bound states for the systems with OFR. With these results we further study the clock-transition spectrum for the two-body bound states, which can be used to experimentally measure the binding energy. Our results are helpful for the quantitative theoretical and experimental researches for the ultracold gases of alkali-earth (like) atoms with OFR.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Kondo Effect in Alkali-Earth Atomic Gases with Confinement-induced Resonance

Alkali-earth atoms have a long-lived electronic excited state, which can be localized in the Fermi sea of ground state atoms by an external potential and serve as magnetic impurities, due to the spin-exchange interaction between the excited and the ground state atoms. This can give rise to the Kondo effect. However, in order to achieve this effect in current atomic gas experiment, it requires the Kondo temperature to be increased to a sizable portion of the Fermi temperature. In this letter we propose that the spin-exchange interaction can be strongly enhanced by utilizing the confinement-induced resonance (CIR). We analyze this system by the renormalization group approach, and we show that nearby a CIR, the Kondo temperature can indeed be increased to the regime attainable by current experiments.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Orbital Feshbach Resonance: A "Wide" Narrow Resonance for Higher Transition Temperature Fermi Superfluid

In this letter we show that the recently theoretically predicted and experimentally observed "orbital Feshbach resonance" in alkali-earth-like Yb-173 atom is a narrow resonance in energy, while it is hundreds Gauss wide in term of magnetic field strength, taking the advantage that the magnetic moment difference between the open and closed channels is quite small. Therefore this is an ideal platform for the experimental realization of a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid with narrow resonance. We show that the transition temperature for the Fermi superfluid in this system, especially at the BCS side of the resonance, is even higher than that in a wide resonance, which is also due to the narrow character of this resonance. Our results will encourage experimental efforts to realize Fermi superfluid in the alkali-earth-like Yb-173 system, the properties of which will be complementary to extensively studied Fermi superfluids nearby a wide resonance in alkali K-40 and Li-6 systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

Orbital Feshbach Resonance with Small Energy Gap between Open and Closed Channels

Recently a new type of Feshbach resonance, i.e., orbital Feshbach resonance (OFR) was proposed for the ultracold alkali-earth (like) atoms, and experimentally observed in the ultracold gases of $^{\rm 173}$Yb atoms. Unlike most of the magnetic Feshbach resonances of ultracold alkali atoms, when the OFR of $^{\rm 173}$Yb atoms appears, the energy gap between the thresholds of the open channel (OC) and the closed channel (CC) is much smaller than the characteristic energy of the inter-atomic interaction, i.e., the van der Waals energy. In this paper we study the OFR in the systems with small CC-OC threshold gap. We show that in these systems the OFR can be induced by the coupling between the OC and either an isolated bound state of the CC or the scattering states of the CC. Moreover, we also show that in each case the two-channel Huang-Yang pesudopoential is always applicable for the approximate calculation of the low-energy scattering amplitude. Our results imply that in the theoretical calculations for these systems it is appropriate to take into account the contributions from the scattering states of the CC.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Orbital Feshbach Resonance in Alkali-Earth Atoms

For a mixture of alkali-earth atomic gas in the long-lived excited state ${}^3P_0$ and ground state ${}^1S_0$, in addition to nuclear spin, another "orbital" index is introduced to distinguish these two internal states. In this letter we propose a mechanism to induce Feshbach resonance between two atoms with different orbital and nuclear spin quantum numbers. Two essential ingredients are inter-orbital spin-exchanging scattering and orbital dependence of the Landé g-factors. Here the orbital degrees of freedom plays similar role as electron spin degree of freedom in magnetic Feshbach resonance in alkali-metal atoms. This resonance is particularly accessible for ${}^{173}$Yb system. The BCS-BEC crossover in this system requires two fermion pairing order parameters, and displays significant difference comparing to that in alkali-metal system.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Calibration of Interaction Energy between Bose and Fermi Superfluids

In this letter we study the interaction energy in a mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids realized in recent cold atom experiment. On the Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) side of a Feshbach resonance between fermionic atoms, this interaction energy can be directly related to the scattering length between a bosonic atom and a dimer composed of fermions. We calculate the atom-dimer scattering length from a three-body analysis with both a zero-range model and a separable model including the van der Waals length scale, and we find significant deviation from the result given by a mean-field approach. We also find that the multiple scattering between atom and dimer can account for such a deviation. Our results provide a calibration to the mean-field interaction energy, which can be verified by measuring the shift of collective oscillation frequency.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

BCS-BEC crossover and quantum phase transition in an ultracold Fermi gas under spin-orbit coupling

In this work, we study the BCS-BEC crossover and quantum phase transition in a Fermi gas under Rashba spin-orbit coupling close to a Feshbach resonance. By adopting a two-channel model, we take into account of the closed channel molecules, and show that combined with spin-orbit coupling, a finite background scattering in the open channel can lead to two branches of solution for both the two-body and the many-body ground states. The branching of the two-body bound state solution originates from the avoided crossing between bound states in the open and the closed channels, respectively. For the many-body states, we identify a quantum phase transition in the upper branch regardless of the sign of the background scattering length, which is in clear contrast to the case without spin-orbit coupling. For systems with negative background scattering length in particular, we show that the bound state in the open channel, and hence the quantum phase transition in the upper branch, are induced by spin-orbit coupling. We then characterize the critical detuning of the quantum phase transition for both positive and negative background scattering lengths, and demonstrate the optimal parameters for the critical point to be probed experimentally.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

Effective Hamiltonians for quasi-one-dimensional Fermi gases with spin-orbit coupling

We derive one-dimensional effective Hamiltonians for spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases confined in quasi-one-dimensional trapping potentials. For energy regime around the two-body bound state energy, the effective Hamiltonian takes a two-channel form, where the population in transverse excited levels are described by dressed molecules in the closed channel. For energy regime slightly above the continuum threshold, the effective Hamiltonian takes a single-channel form, where low-energy physics is governed by the one-dimensional interacting strength determined by three-dimensional scattering length and transverse confinement. We further discuss the effect of spin-orbit coupling and effective Zeeman field on the position of confinement-induced resonances, and show that these resonances can be understood as Feshbach resonances between the threshold of the transverse ground state and the two-body bound state associated with the transverse excited states. We expect that the shift of confinement-induced resonances can be observed under present experimental technology at attainable temperatures.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

Significance of dressed molecules in a quasi-two-dimensional polarized Fermi gas

We investigate the properties of a spin-orbit coupled quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas with tunable s-wave interaction between the two spin species. By analyzing the two-body bound state, we find that the population of the excited states in the tightly-confined axial direction can be significant when the two-body binding energy becomes comparable or exceeds the axial confinement. Since the Rashba spin-orbit coupling that we study here tends to enhance the two-body binding energy, this effect can become prominent at unitarity or even on the BCS side of the Feshbach resonance. To study the impact of these excited modes along the third dimension, we adopt an effective two-dimensional Hamiltonian in the form of a two-channel model, where the dressed molecules in the closed channel consist of the conventional Feshbach molecules as well as the excited states occupation in the axial direction. With properly renormalized interactions between atoms and dressed molecules, we find that both the density distribution and the phase structure in the trap can be significantly modified near a wide Feshbach resonance. In particular, the stability region of the topological superfluid phase is increased. Our findings are helpful for the experimental search for the topological superfluid phase in ultra-cold Fermi gases, and have interesting implications for quasi-low-dimensional polarized Fermi gases in general.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2009

An index to link scientific productivity with visibility

I here propose an index that links the number of papers a researcher has published with impact factors (IFs) of the journals that publish these papers. A researcher is said to have an index z if totally z of his/her papers are published in journals with IFs of at least z/2. The z-index, not meant to evaluate, compare and rank scientists, is a number that hopefully conveniently summarizes the number of publications in journals with high IFs.

physics.data-an↗