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Ultracold atomic gases have emerged as an ideal laboratory system to emulate many-body physics in an unprecedentedly controllable manner. Numerous many-body quantum states and phases have been experimentally explored and characterized using the ultracold atomic gases, offering new insights into many exciting physics ranging from condensed matters to cosmology. In this thesis, we will present a systematic numerical study of a novel experimental system, population imbalanced two-component ultracold Fermi gases. We explore the phase diagram of this system in both 3D and 1D especially focusing on the exotic Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase, which is characterized by a spatially oscillating order parameter. In 3D, we solve for the stationary states of trapped imbalanced Fermi gases in a wide range of parameter space with a home-made parallel eigen-solver for Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations. Our results show that there exists a metastable state with a FFLO type oscillating order parameter. In 1D, we simulate the dynamical expansion of the population imbalanced Fermi gases from the trap. A numerically quasi-exact scheme, time-evolving block decimation (TEBD), is introduced for the comparative studies with the solution of the time-dependent BdG equation. Our results predict that the existence of FFLO states will leave conspicuous signatures in the density profiles during the expansion. For further understanding of the interplay between the population imbalance and two-body pairing interaction between two spin components, we also study the spin transport properties through trapped ultracold Fermi gases. The preliminary results will be discussed.

The problem of the evolution from BCS theory with cooperative Cooper pairing to the formation and condensation of composite bosons has attracted considerable attention for the past several decades. It has gained renewed impetus in the mid-eighties with the discovery of the high-Tc superconductors, which have a coherence length comparable to the interparticle spacing. More recently, this subject has spurred a great deal of research activity in connection with experiments involving dilute atomic gases of fermionic atoms. The initial objective of this work will be to use functional integral techniques to analyze the low-temperature BCS-to-BEC evolution of d-wave superconductors within the saddle point (mean field) approximation for a continuum model. Then, the same mathematical formalism will be applied to the problem of the BCS-to-BEC evolution of fully spin-polarized p-wave Fermi gases in two dimensions. We find that a quantum phase transition occurs for both systems as they are driven from the BCS-like regime of weakly interacting fermionic pairs to the opposite BEC-like regime of strongly interacting bosonic molecules. This is in contrast to the smooth crossover predicted and observed in systems that exhibit s-wave pairing symmetry. We calculate several spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties that signal the occurrence of this phase transition, and suggest some possible experimental realizations. Finally, fluctuations about the saddle point solution are included in the calculations, and the effects of such correction are analyzed in the low (T~0) and high (T~Tc) temperature limits. We conclude that, at high temperatures, the bosonic degrees of freedom that arise from two-particle bound states become essential to describe the strong coupling limit, as the saddle point approximation alone becomes unreliable.

Thesis advisor: Kevin S. Bedell / Landau Fermi-liquid theory was first introduced by L. D. Landau in the effort of understanding the normal state of Fermi systems, where the application of the concept of elementary excitations to the Fermi systems has proved very fruitful in clarifying the physics of strongly correlated quantum systems at low temperatures. In this thesis, I use Landau Fermi-liquid theory to study the transport phenomena of two different correlated quantum liquids: the strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gases and the ferromagnet/normal metal (F/N) junctions. The detailed work is presented in chapter II and chapter III of this thesis, respectively. Chapter I holds the introductory part and the background knowledge of this thesis. In chapter II, I study the transport properties of a Fermi gas with strong attractive interactions close to the unitary limit. In particular, I compute the transport lifetimes of the Fermi gas due to superfluid fluctuations above the BCS transition temperature Tc. To calculate the transport lifetimes I need the scattering amplitudes. The scattering amplitudes are dominated by the superfluid fluctuations at temperatures just above Tc. The normal scattering amplitudes are calculated from the Landau parameters. These Landau parameters are obtained from the local version of the induced interaction model for computing Landau parameters. I also calculate the leading order finite temperature corrections to the various transport lifetimes. A calculation of the spin diffusion coefficient is presented in comparison to the experimental findings. Upon choosing a proper value of F0a, I am able to present a good match between the theoretical result and the experimental measurement, which indicates the presence of the superfluid fluctuations near Tc. Calculations of the viscosity, the viscosity/entropy ratio and the thermal conductivity are also shown in support of the appearance of the superfluid fluctuations. In chapter III, I study the spin transport in the low temperature regime (often referred to as the precession-dominated regime) between a ferromagnetic Fermi liquid (FFL) and a normal metal metallic Fermi liquid (NFL), also known as the (F/N) junction, which is considered as one of the most basic spintronic devices. In particular, I explore the propagation of spin waves and transport of magnetization through the interface of the F/N junction where nonequilibrium spin polarization is created on the normal metal side of the junction by electrical spin injection. I calculate the probable spin wave modes in the precession-dominated regime on both sides of the junction especially on the NFL side where the system is out of equilibrium. Proper boundary conditions at the interface are introduced to establish the transport of the spin properties through the F/N junction. A possible transmission conduction electron spin resonance (CESR) experiment is suggested on the F/N junction to see if the predicted spin wave modes could indeed propagate through the junction. Potential applications based on this novel spin transport feature of the F/N junction are proposed in the end. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Physics.

abstract: In this dissertation two kinds of strongly interacting fermionic systems were studied: cold atomic gases and nucleon systems. In the first part I report T=0 diffusion Monte Carlo results for the ground-state and vortex excitation of unpolarized spin-1/2 fermions in a two-dimensional disk. I investigate how vortex core structure properties behave over the BEC-BCS crossover. The vortex excitation energy, density profiles, and vortex core properties related to the current are calculated. A density suppression at the vortex core on the BCS side of the crossover and a depleted core on the BEC limit is found. Size-effect dependencies in the disk geometry were carefully studied. In the second part of this dissertation I turn my attention to a very interesting problem in nuclear physics. In most simulations of nonrelativistic nuclear systems, the wave functions are found by solving the many-body Schrödinger equations, and they describe the quantum-mechanical amplitudes of the nucleonic degrees of freedom. In those simulations the pionic contributions are encoded in nuclear potentials and electroweak currents, and they determine the low-momentum behavior. By contrast, in this work I present a novel quantum Monte Carlo formalism in which both relativistic pions and nonrelativistic nucleons are explicitly included in the quantum-mechanical states of the system. I report the renormalization of the nucleon mass as a function of the momentum cutoff, an Euclidean time density correlation function that deals with the short-time nucleon diffusion, and the pion cloud density and momentum distributions. In the two nucleon sector the interaction of two static nucleons at large distances reduces to the one-pion exchange potential, and I fit the low-energy constants of the contact interactions to reproduce the binding energy of the deuteron and two neutrons in finite volumes. I conclude by showing that the method can be readily applied to light-nuclei. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Physics 2018

This thesis presents the experimental study on the two-spin component, strongly interacting 6 Li Fermi gases in 3D and 1D traps. The interaction strength is tuned from the molecular BEC regime to the BCS regime using a Feshbach resonance. The trap dimension can be tuned from 3D to 1D with the implementation of optical lattice. The evaporation of imbalanced Fermi gases in 3D trap is studied. The anisotropic and fast evaporation is the cause of the deformation observed in the 2006 Rice experiment. In a balanced Fermi system, the fraction of correlated states is measured as a function of interaction and temperature. At unitarity, the fraction of correlated states is ∼85% and exists above T c . The one-body-like photoexcitation rate can be related to the contact quantity. Lastly, the spin-imbalance in a one-dimensional Fermi gas is studied. The 1D phase diagram is mapped out. The result agrees well with the 1D theory, in which the partially polarized regime is predicted to be a FFLO phase, an exotic superfluid with pairs carrying finite center-of-mass momentum proposed almost 50 years ago.

This dissertation presents the implementation of a technique to generate atomic Fock states of Lithium 6 with ultra-high fidelity, called laser culling. Fock states, atomic states with a definite number of particles, are a mandatory step for studying few-body quantum phenomena such as quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, and serve as building blocks for quantum simulators. The creation of ultra-high fidelity Fock states begins with a degenerate Fermi gas in an optical dipole trap. Being fermions, lithium-6 atoms fill the energy levels of the dipole trap with 2 atoms per energy level. Introducing a magnetic field gradient creates a linear potential that tilts the potential produced by the optical dipole trap. The initially bound energy levels become quasi-bound states, each with a different lifetime. By exploiting the difference between these lifetimes, one can generate a single pair of atoms in the ground state of the trap with fidelities that can exceed 99.9%. This dissertation first presents the details of the design and construction of an apparatus for laser culling, and then reports on the progress made towards the creation of atomic Fock states with ultra-high fidelity. / text

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Ultracold Fermi gas is an exciting field benefiting from atomic physics, optical physics and condensed matter physics. It covers many aspects of quantum mechanics. Here I introduce some of my work during my graduate study. We proposed an optical spectroscopic method based on electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) as a generic probing tool that provides valuable insights into the nature of Fermi paring in ultracold Fermi gases of two hyperfine states. This technique has the capability of allowing spectroscopic response to be determined in a nearly non-destructive manner and the whole spectrum may be obtained by scanning the probe laser frequency faster than the lifetime of the sample without re-preparing the atomic sample repeatedly. Both quasiparticle picture and pseudogap picture are constructed to facilitate the physical explanation of the pairing signature in the EIT spectra. Motivated by the prospect of realizing a Fermi gas of 40 K atoms with a synthetic non-Abelian gauge field, we investigated theoretically BEC-HCS crossover physics in the presence of a Rashba spin-orbit coupling in a system of two-component Fermi gas with and without a Zeeman field that breaks the population balance. A new bound state (Rashba pair) emerges because of the spin-orbit interaction. We studied the properties of Rashba pairs using a standard pair fluctuation theory. As the two-fold spin degeneracy is lifted by spin-orbit interaction, bound pairs with mixed singlet and triplet pairings (referred to as rashbons) emerge, leading to an anisotropic superfluid. We discussed in detail the experimental signatures for observing the condensation of Rashba pairs by calculating various physical observables which characterize the properties of the system and can be measured in experiment. The role of impurities as experimental probes in the detection of quantum material properties is well appreciated. Here we studied the effect of a single classical impurity in trapped ultracold Fermi superfluids. Although a non-magnetic impurity does not change macroscopic properties of s-wave Fermi superfluids, depending on its shape and strength, a magnetic impurity can induce single or multiple mid-gap bound states. The multiple mid-gap states could coincide with the development of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase within the superfluid. As an analog of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, we proposed a modified radio frequency spectroscopic method to measure the focal density of states which can be employed to detect these states and other quantum phases of cold atoms. A key result of our self consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes calculations is that a magnetic impurity can controllably induce an FFLO state at currently accessible experimental parameters.

Les progrès techniques réalisés dans le cadre des expériences sur les gaz de fermions ultrafroids ont engendré une émulation particulièrement importante ces dernières années. En effet, ces dispositifs expérimentaux permettent de produire des systèmes gazeux ≪ à la carte ≫, notamment grâce au phénomène de résonances de Feshbach qui permet de contrôler le signe de la longueur de diffusion a par application d'un champ magnétique extérieur. Il est alors possible de générer aussi bien une interaction attractive (a < 0) que répulsive (a > 0). La résonance de Feshbach en elle-même se trouve en a → ±∞, cette limite correspondant à un régime de fortes corrélations entre les particules. De plus, dans la région où a est positive, des états lies moléculaires (bosoniques car formés de deux fermions) peuvent se former. En-dessous d'une certaine température, une phase superfluide peut alors apparaitre, et une transition de phase continue entre l'état bosonique et l'état fermionique peut être observée (BEC-BCS crossover). En fonction de la position dans le diagramme de phases, les modes collectifs possèderont des caractéristiques (fréquence, amortissement) différentes. En ce sens, ils constituent une sonde de l'état de la matière et une connaissance précise de ces modes est par conséquent très importante. Le travail présenté dans cette thèse comporte une caractérisation détaillée de plusieurs modes collectifs dans la phase normale du système atomique. L'étude repose principalement sur l'équation de Boltzmann, que nous résolvons de deux façons différentes. La première consiste à utiliser une méthode des moments ≪ améliorée ≫ (c'est-à-dire d'ordre supérieur). La seconde est numérique et a nécessité l'écriture d'un programme de simulation permettant l'incorporation de tous les effets de milieu (potentiel de champ moyen et section efficace). Une attention toute particulière a été apportée à la mise en place des simulations afin de reproduire le plus fidèlement possible les conditions expérimentales. Les techniques expérimentales permettent également désormais la création de gaz polarisés. Nous présenterons donc dans ce travail une étude de ces gaz utilisant notre programme de simulation (mise en évidence des différents régimes de collision), puis une étude plus théorique ayant pour principal objectif d'établir le diagramme de phase encore méconnu de ces gaz particuliers, et enfin de proposer une méthode de calcul des effets de milieu, les techniques habituelles utilisées pour les gaz non polarisés n'étant plus valables / Technical progress on ultra-cold Fermi gases experiments induced numerous studies for the last few years. Using these experimental setups, it is effectively possible to generate ultra-cold gases with selected properties, in particular through the Feshbach resonances phenomenon. This allows us to set the sign of the scattering length a using an external magnetic field. It is then possible to have an attractive interaction (a < 0) as well as a repulsive one (a > 0). The Feshbach resonance itself is defined for infinite values of a (positive or negative), which corresponds to a strongly interacting regime. Moreover, when a > 0, molecular bound states (bosonic because they are made with two fermionic atoms) can appear. Thus, below a critical temperature, a superfluid phase can emerge and a crossover can be observed (from the BEC to BCS superfluid states). Depending on the position on the phase diagram, frequency and damping of collective modes will be different. This is why the collective modes are good probes of the system phase. A precise extensive knowledge of their characteristics is thus very important. This thesis presents a complete study of some of these collective modes in the normal phase. This work mainly relies on the Boltzmann equation which will be solved in two different ways: firstly, with an improved (higher order) version of the so-called moments method; secondly with a numerical solution that has required to write a numerical code in order to take into account the in-medium effects (mean field potential and in-medium cross section). Particular attention has been paid to numerical simulations in order to reproduce as closely as possible the experimental conditions. Moreover, experimental procedures now allow to create spin unbalanced gases. We have shown in this work a study of these systems using the numerical resolution of the Boltzmann equation. Moreover, we have developed a theoretical approach in order to build the phase diagram of these polarized gases, which is not fully described yet. Finally, we have suggested a method to determine the in-medium effects, with the aim to solve the problem emerging with the usual method used in the balanced case