Quantum phase transition in an atomic bose gas with a feshbach resonance

We show that in an atomic Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance a quantum phase transition occurs between a phase with only a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate and a phase with both an atomic and a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that the transition is characterized by an Ising order parameter. We also determine the phase diagram of the gas as a function of magnetic field and temperature: the quantum critical point extends into a line of finite temperature Ising transitions.     

Superfluidity and phase transitions in a resonant Bose gas

The atomic Bose gas is studied across a Feshbach resonance, mapping out its phase diagram, and computing its thermodynamics and excitation spectra. It is shown that such a degenerate gas admits two distinct atomic and molecular superfluid phases, with the latter distinguished by the absence of atomic off-diagonal long-range order, gapped atomic excitations, and deconfined atomic π-vortices. The properties of the molecular superfluid are explored, and it is shown that across a Feshbach resonance it undergoes a quantum Ising transition to the atomic superfluid, where both atoms and molecules are condensed. In addition to its distinct thermodynamic signatures and deconfined half-vortices, in a trap a molecular superfluid should be identifiable by the absence of an atomic condensate peak and the presence of a molecular one.     

Topological gapless matters in three-dimensional ultracold atomic gases

Three-dimensional topological gapless matters with gapless degeneracies protected by a topological invariant defined over a closed manifold in momentum space have attracted considerable interest in various fields ranging from condensed matter materials to ultracold atomic gases. As a highly controllable and disorder free system, ultracold atomic gases provide a versatile platform to simulate topological gapless matters. Here, the current progress in studies of topological gapless phenomena in three-dimensional cold atom systems is summarized in the review. It is mainly focused on Weyl points, structured (type-II) Weyl points, Dirac points, nodal rings and Weyl exceptional rings in cold atoms. Since interactions in cold atoms can be controlled via Feshbach resonances, the progress in both superfluids for attractive interactions and non-interacting cold atom gases is reviewed.     

Superfluid transitions in bosonic atom-molecule mixtures near a Feshbach resonance

We study bosonic atoms near a Feshbach resonance and predict that, in addition to standard normal and atomic superfluid phases, this system generically exhibits a distinct phase of matter: a molecular superfluid, where molecules are superfluid while atoms are not. We explore zero- and finite-temperature properties of the molecular superfluid (a bosonic, strong-coupling analog of a BCS superconductor), and study quantum and classical phase transitions between the normal, molecular superfluid, and atomic superfluid states.     

Theory for p-wave Feshbach molecules

We determine the physical properties of p-wave Feshbach molecules in doubly spin-polarized 40K and find excellent agreement with recent experiments. We show that these molecules have a large probability Z to be in the closed channel or bare molecular state responsible for the Feshbach resonance. In the superfluid state this allows for observation of Rabi oscillations between the molecular and atomic components of the Bose-Einstein condensed pairs, which contains a characteristic signature of the quantum phase transition that occurs as a function of applied magnetic field.     

Quantum phases in a resonantly interacting boson-fermion mixture

We consider a resonantly interacting boson-fermion mixture of 40K and 87Rb atoms in an optical lattice. We show that by using a red-detuned optical lattice the mixture can be accurately described by a generalized Hubbard model for 40K and 87Rb atoms, and 40K-87Rb molecules. The microscopic parameters of this model are fully determined by the details of the optical lattice and the interspecies Feshbach resonance in the absence of the lattice. We predict a quantum phase transition to occur in this system already at low atomic filling fraction, and present the phase diagram as a function of the temperature and the applied magnetic field.     

Optical control of Feshbach resonances in Fermi gases using molecular dark states

We propose a general method for optical control of magnetic Feshbach resonances in ultracold atomic gases with more than one molecular state in an energetically closed channel. Using two optical frequencies to couple two states in the closed channel, inelastic loss arising from spontaneous emission is greatly suppressed by destructive quantum interference at the two-photon resonance, i.e., dark-state formation, while the scattering length is widely tunable by varying the frequencies and/or intensities of the optical fields. This technique is of particular interest for a two-component atomic Fermi gas, which is stable near a Feshbach resonance.     

px+ipy superfluid from s-wave interactions of fermionic cold atoms

Two-dimensional (p(x)+ip(y)) superfluids or superconductors offer a playground for studying intriguing physics such as quantum teleportation, non-Abelian statistics, and topological quantum computation. Creating such a superfluid in cold fermionic atom optical traps using p-wave Feshbach resonance is turning out to be challenging. Here we propose a method to create a p(x)+ip(y) superfluid directly from an s-wave interaction making use of a topological Berry phase, which can be artificially generated. We discuss ways to detect the spontaneous Hall mass current, which acts as a diagnostic for the chiral p-wave superfluid.     

Quantum Hall transition near a fermion Feshbach resonance in a rotating trap

We consider two-species of fermions in a rotating trap that interact via an s-wave Feshbach resonance, at total Landau level filling factor two (or one for each species). We show that the system undergoes a quantum phase transition from a fermion integer quantum Hall state to a boson fractional quantum Hall state as the pairing interaction strength increases, with the transition occurring near the resonance. The effective field theory for the transition is shown to be that of a (emergent) massless relativistic bosonic field coupled to a Chern-Simons gauge field, with the coupling giving rise to semionic statistics to the emergent particles.     

Molecular matter-wave amplifier

We describe a matter-wave amplifier for vibrational ground-state molecules which uses a Feshbach resonance to first form quasibound molecules starting from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The quasibound molecules are then driven into their stable vibrational ground state via a two-photon Raman transition inside an optical cavity. The transition from the quasibound state to the electronically excited state is driven by a classical field. Amplification of ground state molecules is then achieved by using a strongly damped cavity mode for the transition from the electronically excited molecules to the molecular ground state.     

Quantum spin dynamics of mode-squeezed Luttinger liquids in two-component atomic gases

We report on the observation of many-body spin dynamics of interacting, one-dimensional (1D) ultracold bosonic gases with two spin states. By controlling the nonlinear atomic interactions close to a Feshbach resonance we are able to induce a phase diffusive many-body spin dynamics of the relative phase between the two components. We monitor this dynamical evolution by Ramsey interferometry, supplemented by a novel, many-body echo technique, which unveils the role of quantum fluctuations in 1D. We find that the time evolution of the system is well described by a Luttinger liquid initially prepared in a multimode squeezed state. Our approach allows us to probe the nonequilibrium evolution of one-dimensional many-body quantum systems.     

Vortex-core structure in neutral fermion superfluids with population imbalance

Quantized vortex-core structure is theoretically investigated in fermion superfluids with population imbalance for two atom species of neutral atom clouds near a Feshbach resonance. In contrast with the vortex core in balance case where the quantum depletion makes a vortex visible through the density profile measurement, the vortex core is filled in and becomes less visible because the quantized discrete bound states are occupied exclusively by the majority species. Yet it is shown that the core can be visible through the minority density profile experiment using phase contrast imaging, revealing an interesting opportunity to examine low-lying fermionic core bound states unexplored so far.     

Number statistics of molecules formed from ultracold atoms

We calculate the number statistics of a single-mode molecular field excited by photo-association or via a Feshbach resonance from an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a normal atomic Fermi gas, and a Fermi system with pair correlations (BCS state). We find that the molecule formation from a BEC leads for short times to a coherent molecular state in the quantum optical sense. Atoms in a normal Fermi gas, on the other hand, result for short times in a molecular field analog of a classical chaotic light source. The BCS situation is intermediate between the two and goes from producing an incoherent to a coherent molecular field with an increasing gap parameter. This distinct signature of the initial atomic state in the resulting molecular field makes single molecule counting into a powerful diagnostic tool.     

Coherent states and quantum oscillations of BEC-BCS systems

We show by using the mean-field approximation that the states of composite Fermi-Bose superfluids created in cold-atom traps via a Feshbach resonance at zero temperature are generalized SU(2)⊗SU(1,1) coherent states. In response to a sudden change of the interaction between fermionic atoms and bosonic molecules, a Cooper pair can exhibit collapse and revival quantum behaviors for an initial generalized coherent state of molecules, and Rabi oscillation for a vacuum molecular state. Occurrence of the collapse and revival phenomenon is thus the manifestation of the formation of the Bose-Einstein condensate.     

Transition from a one-dimensional to a quasi-one-dimensional state in interacting quantum wires

Upon increasing the electron density in a quantum wire, the one-dimensional electron system undergoes a transition to a quasi-one-dimensional state. In the absence of interactions between electrons, this corresponds to filling up the second subband of transverse quantization, and there are two gapless excitation modes above the transition. On the other hand, strongly interacting one-dimensional electrons form a Wigner crystal, and the transition corresponds to it splitting into two chains (zigzag crystal). We show that the soft mode driving the transition to the zigzag state is gapped, and only one gapless mode exists above the transition. Furthermore, we establish that in the vicinity of the transition already arbitrarily weak interactions open a gap in the second mode. We then argue that only one gapless mode exists near the transition at any interaction strength.     

Quantum emulsion: a glassy phase of bosonic mixtures in optical lattices

We numerically investigate mixtures of two interacting bosonic species with unequal parameters in one-dimensional optical lattices. In large parameter regions full phase segregation is seen to minimize the energy of the system, but the true ground state is masked by an exponentially large number of metastable states characterized by microscopic phase separation. The ensemble of these quantum emulsion states, reminiscent of emulsions of immiscible fluids, has macroscopic properties analogous to those of a Bose glass, namely, a finite compressibility in absence of superfluidity. Their metastability is probed by extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations generating rich correlated stochastic dynamics. The tuning of the repulsion of one of the two species via a Feshbach resonance drives the system through a quantum phase transition to the superfluid state.     

Fractionalization via Z(2) gauge fields at a cold-atom quantum Hall transition

We study a single species of fermionic atoms in an "effective" magnetic field at total filling factor ν(f)=1, interacting through a p-wave Feshbach resonance, and show that the system undergoes a quantum phase transition from a ν(f)=1 fermionic integer quantum Hall state to ν(b)=1/4 bosonic fractional quantum Hall state as a function of detuning. The transition is in the (2+1)D Ising universality class. We formulate a dual theory in terms of quasiparticles interacting with a Z(2) gauge field and show that charge fractionalization follows from this topological quantum phase transition. Experimental consequences and possible tests of our theoretical predictions are discussed.     

Quantum phase transitions across a p-wave Feshbach resonance

We study a single-species polarized Fermi gas tuned across a narrow p-wave Feshbach resonance. We show that in the course of a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC)-BCS crossover, the system can undergo a magnetic-field-tuned quantum phase transition from a px-wave to a px+ipy-wave superfluid. The latter state, that spontaneously breaks time-reversal symmetry, furthermore undergoes a topological px+ipy to px+ipy transition at zero chemical potential mu. In two dimensions, for mu > 0 it is characterized by a Pfaffian ground state exhibiting topological order and non-Abelian excitations familiar from fractional quantum Hall systems.     

Atom-molecule Rabi oscillations in a Mott insulator

We observe large-amplitude Rabi oscillations between an atomic and a molecular state near a Feshbach resonance. The experiment uses 87Rb in an optical lattice and a Feshbach resonance near 414 G. The frequency and amplitude of the oscillations depend on the magnetic field in a way that is well described by a two-level model. The observed density dependence of the oscillation frequency agrees with theoretical expectations. We confirmed that the state produced after a half-cycle contains exactly one molecule at each lattice site. In addition, we show that, for energies in a gap of the lattice band structure, the molecules cannot dissociate.