Dynamics of Single Neutral Impurity Atoms Immersed in an Ultracold Gas

Spethmann, Nicolas; Kindermann, Farina; John, Shincy; Weber, C.; Meschede, Dieter; Widera, Artur

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.109.235301

Cited by 192 publications

(207 citation statements)

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“…Twocomponent bosonic systems in 1D [29,68,69] can be used to explore the equal mass Bose polarons. Massimbalanced Bose-Bose mixtures in 1D have been explored with 87 Rb and 41 K (m AB < 1) [26] and new experiments with 87 Rb and 133 Cs (m AB > 1) appear promising if an effective 1D geometry can be reached [27]. Our theory provides predictions for experiments in the 1D regime taking into account any experimental features such as different trap frequencies for different atoms, relative displacement of the trap, and mass imbalance.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…While Fermi polarons have been studied intensively in recent times using cold atomic setups both experimentally and theoretically [21][22][23][24][25], the physics of impurities in a bosonic environment is only now becoming a frontier in cold atom experiments [26][27][28][29]. This pursuit requires theoretical models for describing the Bose polaron [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], where, in contrast to the Fermi polaron, an exact solution is not known even for a homogeneous 1D system.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Quantum impurity in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas

2015

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We present a new theoretical framework for describing an impurity in a trapped Bose system in one spatial dimension. The theory handles any external confinement, arbitrary mass ratios, and a weak interaction may be included between the Bose particles. To demonstrate our technique, we calculate the ground state energy and properties of a sample system with eight bosons and find an excellent agreement with numerically exact results. Our theory can thus provide definite predictions for experiments in cold atomic gases.PACS numbers: 03.75. Mn,67.85.Pq An impurity interacting with a reservoir of quantum particles is an essential problem of fundamental physics. Famous examples include a single charge in a polarizable environment, the Landau-Pekar polaron [1, 2], a neutral particle in superfluid 4 He [3], a magnetic impurity in a metal resulting in the Kondo effect [4], and a single scattering potential inside an ideal Fermi gas [5,6]. The latter system is famous for the Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe [7]. In these settings the impurity behavior can provide key insights into the many-body physics and guide our understanding of more general setups.A complicating feature of many impurity problems is the presence of interactions at a level that often precludes the use of perturbative analysis and self-consistent mean-field approximations. This implies that analytical approaches are highly desirable and exact solutions are, when available, coveted tools for benchmarking other techniques. This is particularly true for one-dimensional (1D) homogeneous systems where solutions can often be found based on the Bethe ansatz [8][9][10][11][12][13]. These solutions are the essential ingredients for our analytical understanding of highly controllable experiments with cold atoms [14][15][16][17][18][19]. For instance, the exactly solvable problem of the single impurity in a 1D Fermi sea [10] -the Fermi polaron -can be used to study the atom-by-atom formation of a 1D Fermi sea [20].While Fermi polarons have been studied intensively in recent times using cold atomic setups both experimentally and theoretically [21][22][23][24][25], the physics of impurities in a bosonic environment is only now becoming a frontier in cold atom experiments [26][27][28][29]. This pursuit requires theoretical models for describing the Bose polaron [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], where, in contrast to the Fermi polaron, an exact solution is not known even for a homogeneous 1D system. Here we provide a new theoretical framework that captures the properties of an impurity in a bosonic bath confined in one spatial dimension. Our (semi)-analytical theory thus provides a state-of-the-art tool for exploring the properties of Bose polarons in 1D.The proposed framework works with a zero-range potential of any strength and handles any number of ma- FIG. 1: (color online) a)A sketch of the doubly-degenerate ground state for the system of one A and eight B particles trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic potential ...

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confidence: 98%

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confidence: 99%

Quantum impurity in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas

2015

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“…Recent theoretical work [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] has explored the Bose polaron case, and the ability to use a Feshbach resonance to tune [10] the impurity-boson scattering length a IB opens the possibility of exploring the Bose polaron in the strongly interacting regime [11][12][13][14]. Experiments to date [15][16][17][18][19][20] have focused on the weak Bose polaron limit. The Bose polaron in the strongly interacting regime is interesting in part because it represents step towards understanding a fully strongly interacting Bose system.…”

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Bose Polarons in the Strongly Interacting Regime

Hu¹,

Graaff²,

Kedar³

et al. 2016

Phys. Rev. Lett.

446

507

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When an impurity is immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate, impurity-boson interactions are expected to dress the impurity into a quasiparticle, the Bose polaron. We superimpose an ultracold atomic gas of 87 Rb with a much lower density gas of fermionic 40 K impurities. Through the use of a Feshbach resonance and RF spectroscopy, we characterize the energy, spectral width and lifetime of the resultant polaron on both the attractive and the repulsive branches in the strongly interacting regime. The width of the polaron in the attractive branch is narrow compared to its binding energy, even as the two-body scattering length formally diverges.The behavior of a dilute impurity interacting with quantum bath is a simplified yet nontrivial many-body model system with wide relevance to material systems. For example, an electron moving in an ionic crystal lattice is dressed by coupling to phonons and forms a quasiparticle known as a Bose polaron (see Fig. 1a) that is an important paradigm in quantum many-body physics [1]. Impurity atoms immersed in a degenerate bosonic or fermionic atomic gas are a convenient experimental realization for Bose or Fermi polaron physics, respectively. Recent theoretical work [2-9] has explored the Bose polaron case, and the ability to use a Feshbach resonance to tune [10] the impurity-boson scattering length a IB opens the possibility of exploring the Bose polaron in the strongly interacting regime [11][12][13][14]. Experiments to date [15][16][17][18][19][20] have focused on the weak Bose polaron limit. The Bose polaron in the strongly interacting regime is interesting in part because it represents step towards understanding a fully strongly interacting Bose system. While a IB can be tuned to approach infinity, the boson-boson scattering length a BB can still correspond to the meanfield limit. A dilute impurity interacting very strongly with a Bose gas that is otherwise in the mean-field regime is, on the one hand, something more difficult to model and to measure than a weakly interacting system. On the other hand it is theoretically more tractable, and empirically more stable than a single-component "unitary" Bose gas in which a BB diverges and thus every pair of atoms is strongly coupled [21].Our experiment employs techniques similar to those used in recent Fermi polaron measurements [22][23][24][25]. However, there are important differences between the Bose polaron and the Fermi polaron. From a theory point of view, the Bose polaron problem involves an interacting superfluid environment and also has the possibility of three-body interactions [14], both of which are not present for the Fermi polaron. And on the experimental side, both three-body inelastic collisions and the relatively small spatial extent of a BEC (compared to that of the impurity gas) create challenges for measurements of the Bose polaron. This work, in parallel with work done at Aarhus [26], describes the first experiments performed on Bose polarons in the strongly interacting regime. In our case, the impurity is fermi...

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“…This type of problem has recently benefitted from the recent progress in cold atomic systems [4]. Indeed, in such systems impurities in quantum baths can be realized in a variety of manners ranging from Fermi or Bose mixtures to ions in condensates, and at various dimensionalities [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

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Phase Transitions for a Collective Coordinate Coupled to Luttinger Liquids

2013

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We study various realizations of collective coordinates, e.g., the position of a particle, the charge of a Coulomb box, or the phase of a Bose or a superconducting condensate, coupled to Luttinger liquids with N flavors. We find that for a Luttinger parameter ð1=2Þ < K < 1 there is a phase transition from a delocalized phase into a phase with a periodic potential at strong coupling. In the delocalized phase the dynamics is dominated by an effective mass, i.e., diffusive in imaginary time, while on the transition line it becomes dissipative. At K ¼ ð1=2Þ there is an additional transition into a localized phase with no diffusion at zero temperature.

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Dynamics of Single Neutral Impurity Atoms Immersed in an Ultracold Gas

Cited by 192 publications

References 40 publications

Quantum impurity in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas

Quantum impurity in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas

Bose Polarons in the Strongly Interacting Regime

Phase Transitions for a Collective Coordinate Coupled to Luttinger Liquids

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