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Conformal field theories (CFT) play an important role in quantum field theories as they allow for exact studies that are hard to access without the conformal symmetries in place. A remarkable recent development is the application of conformal field theory to periodically driven systems, the so-called Floquet-driven CFTs. A number of recent works have found that there are classes of periodically driven (1+1)-dimensional CFTs that can be analytically solved, and that show both heating and non-heating phases, as well as unusual properties in terms of information scrambling. Hitherto, most results have focused on the dynamics of such models at stroboscopic times, i.e. samples taken at each period of the time evolution. In this paper, we consider time-evolution at arbitrary real times and derive formulas for the exact time-propagation of heating and non-heating classes of Floquet-driven CFTs. This requires a subtle treatment of non-stroboscopic time that leads to different interpretations in terms of curved space-time dynamics in these systems compared to previous results in the literature., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

We investigate the physics of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid of spin-polarized fermions superimposed on an ion chain. This compound system features (attractive) long-range interspecies interactions. By means of density matrix renormalization group techniques we compute the Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid parameter and speed of sound as a function of the relative atom/ion density and the two quantum defect parameters, namely, the even and odd short-range phases which characterize the short-range part of the atom-ion polarization potential. The presence of ions is found to allow critical tuning of the atom-atom interaction, and the properties of the system are found to depend significantly on the short-range phases due to the atom-ion interaction. These latter dependencies can be controlled, for instance, by manipulating the ions' internal state. This allows modification of the static properties of the quantum liquid via external driving of the ionic impurities., 11 pages, 8 figures, similar to published version

We investigate a temporal evolution of an impurity atom in a one-dimensional trapped Bose gas following a sudden change of the boson-impurity interaction strength. Our focus is on the effects of inhomogeneity due to the harmonic confinement. These effects can be described by an effective one-body model where both the mass and the spring constant are renormalized. This is in contrast to the classic renormalization, which addresses only the mass. We propose an effective single-particle Hamiltonian and apply the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method for bosons to explore its validity. Numerical results suggest that the effective mass is smaller than the impurity mass, which means that it cannot straightforwardly be extracted from translationally invariant models., Version accepted for publication in PRA

The exotic phenomenon of time translation symmetry breaking under periodic driving - the time crystal - has been shown to occur in many-body systems even in clean setups where disorder is absent. In this work, we propose the realization of time-crystals in few-body systems, both in the context of trapped cold atoms with strong interactions and of a circuit of superconducting qubits. We show how these two models can be treated in a fairly similar way by adopting an effective spin chain description, to which we apply a simple driving protocol. We focus on the response of the magnetization in the presence of imperfect pulses and interactions, and show how the results can be interpreted, in the cold atomic case, in the context of experiments with trapped bosons and fermions. Furthermore, we provide a set of realistic parameters for the implementation of the superconducting circuit., 6 pages, 4 figures

We investigate three-body recombination rates into deep dimers in cold atomic gases with large scattering length within hyper-spherical adiabatic zero-range approach. We derive closed analytic expressions for the rates for one- and two-species gases. Although the deep dimers are beyond the zero-range theory the latter can still describe the recombination into deep dimers by use of one additional short-range absorption parameter. The recombination rate, as function of the scattering length, retains the known universal behavior --- the fourth power trend with characteristic log-periodic peaks --- however increasing the short-range absorption broadens the peaks until they are eventually completely smeared out. Increasing the heavy-to-light mass ratio in a two-species system decreases the distance between the peaks and increases the overal scale of the recombination rate., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Conference "Systems on the verge of the stability" (Critical Stability 2014)

We develop a quantum simulator architecture that is suitable for the simulation of $U(1)$ Abelian gauge theories such as quantum electrodynamics. Our approach relies on the ability to control the hopping of a particle through a barrier by means of the internal quantum states of a neutral or charged impurity-particle sitting at the barrier. This scheme is experimentally feasible, as the correlated hopping does not require fine-tuning of the intra- and inter-species interactions. We investigate the applicability of the scheme in a double well potential, which is the basic building block of the simulator, both at the single-particle and the many-body mean-field level. Moreover, we evaluate its performance for different particle interactions and trapping, and, specifically for atom-ion systems, in the presence of micro-motion., 16 pages, 8 figures, final version

We consider quantum scattering of particles in media exhibiting strong dispersion degeneracy. In particular, we study flat-banded lattices and linearly dispersed energy bands. The former constitute a prime example of single-particle frustration while the latter show degeneracy at the few- and many-particle level. We investigate both impurity and two-body scattering and show that, quite generally, scattering does not occur, which we relate to the fact that transition matrices vanish on the energy shell. We prove that scattering is instead replaced by projections onto band-projected eigenstates of the interaction potential. We then use the general results to obtain localised flat band states that are eigenstates of impurity potentials with vanishing eigenvalues in one-dimensional flat bands and study the particular case of a sawtooth lattice. We also uncover the relation between certain solutions of one-dimensional systems that have been categorised as "strange", and the scattering states in linearly dispersed continuum systems., 7 pages, 0 figures. Updated references

A detailed analysis of a system of four interacting ultracold fermions confined in a one-dimensional harmonic trap is performed. The analysis is done in the framework of a simple variational ansatz for the many-body ground state, and its predictions are compared with the results of numerically exact diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian. A short discussion of the role of the quantum statistics, i.e., Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi mixtures, is also presented. It is concluded that the variational ansatz, although appearing to be oversimplified, gives surprisingly good predictions of many different quantities for mixtures of equal as well as different mass systems. The result may have some experimental importance since it gives a quite simple and validated method for describing experimental outputs.

Recently, the topics of many-body localization (MBL) and one-dimensional strongly interacting few-body systems have received a lot of interest. These two topics have been largely developed separately. However, the generality of the latter as far as external potentials are concerned -- including random and quasirandom potentials -- and their shared spatial dimensionality, makes it an interesting way of dealing with MBL in the strongly interacting regime. Utilising tools developed for few-body systems we look to gain insight into the localization properties of the spin in a Fermi gas with strong interactions. We observe a delocalized--localized transition over a range of fillings of a quasirandom lattice. We find this transition to be of a different nature for low and high fillings, due to the diluteness of the system for low fillings., 6 pages, 3 figures

Spin chains are paradigmatic systems for the studies of quantum phases and phase transitions, and for quantum information applications, including quantum computation and short-distance quantum communication. Here we propose and analyse a scheme for conditional state transfer in a Heisenberg XXZ spin chain which realizes a quantum spin transistor. In our scheme, the absence or presence of a control spin excitation in the central gate part of the spin chain results in either perfect transfer of an arbitrary state of a target spin between the weakly coupled input and output ports, or its complete blockade at the input port. We also discuss a possible proof-of-concept realization of the corresponding spin chain with a one-dimensional ensemble of cold atoms with strong contact interactions. Our scheme is generally applicable to various implementations of tunable spin chains, and it paves the way for the realization of integrated quantum logic elements., Systems of interacting quantum spins provide a basis for quantum computation devices. Here, the authors demonstrate a quantum spin transistor in a Heisenberg spin chain, which may be realized in a system of trapped cold atoms.

We consider dipolar interactions between heteronuclear molecules in low-dimensional geometries. The setup consists of two one-dimensional tubes. We study the stability of possible few-body complexes in the regime of repulsive intratube interaction, where the binding arises from intertube attraction. The stable dimers, trimers, and tetramers are found and we discuss their properties for both bosonic and fermionic molecules. To observe these complexes we propose an optical non-destructive detection scheme that enables in-situ observation of the creation and dissociation of the few-body complexes. A detailed description of the expected signal of such measurements is given using the numerically calculated wave functions of the bound states. We also discuss implications on the many-body physics of dipolar systems in tubular geometries, as well as experimental issues related to the external harmonic confinement along the tube and the prospect of applying an in-tube optical lattice to increase the effective dipole strength., Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, published version

We consider a one-dimensional system of particles with strong zero-range interactions. This system can be mapped onto a spin chain of the Heisenberg type with exchange coefficients that depend on the external trap. In this paper, we present an algorithm that can be used to compute these exchange coefficients. We introduce an open source code CONAN (Coefficients of One-dimensional N-Atom Networks) which is based on this algorithm. CONAN works with arbitrary external potentials and we have tested its reliability for system sizes up to around 35 particles. As illustrative examples, we consider a harmonic trap and a box trap with a superimposed asymmetric tilted potential. For these examples, the computation time typically scales with the number of particles as $O(N^{3.5 \pm 0.4})$. Computation times are around 10 seconds for $N=10$ particles and less than 10 minutes for $N=20$ particles., 16 pages, 3 figures, 4 technical appendices, revised version with updated examples and appendices. Source code and compiled versions of CONAN can be found at http://phys.au.dk/forskning/forskningsomraader/amo/few-body-physics-in-a-many-body-world/conan

One-dimensional multi-component Fermi or Bose systems with strong zero-range interactions can be described in terms of local exchange coefficients and mapping the problem into a spin model is thus possible. For arbitrary external confining potentials the local exchanges are given by highly non-trivial geometric factors that depend solely on the geometry of the confinement through the single-particle eigenstates of the external potential. To obtain accurate effective Hamiltonians to describe such systems one needs to be able to compute these geometric factors with high precision which is difficult due to the computational complexity of the high-dimensional integrals involved. An approach using the local density approximation would therefore be a most welcome approximation due to its simplicity. Here we assess the accuracy of the local density approximation by going beyond the simple harmonic oscillator that has been the focus of previous studies and consider some double-wells of current experimental interest. We find that the local density approximation works quite well as long as the potentials resemble harmonic wells but break down for larger barriers. In order to explore the consequences of applying the local density approximation in a concrete setup we consider quantum state transfer in the effective spin models that one obtains. Here we find that even minute deviations in the local exchange coefficients between the exact and the local density approximation can induce large deviations in the fidelity of state transfer for four, five, and six particles., 12 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, final version

Ultracold atomic gases have recently become a driving force in few-body physics due to the observation of the Efimov effect. While initially observed in equal mass systems, one expects even richer few-body physics in the heteronuclear case. In previous experiments with ultracold mixtures of potassium and rubidium, an unexpected non-universal behavior of Efimov resonances was observed. In contrast, we measure the scattering length dependent three-body recombination coefficient in ultracold heteronuclear mixtures of $^{39}\mathrm{K}$-\87Rb and $^{41}\mathrm{K}$-\87Rb and do not observe any signatures of Efimov resonances for accessible scattering lengths in either mixture. Our results show good agreement with our theoretical model for the scattering dependent three-body recombination coefficient and reestablish universality across isotopic mixtures., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table in supplementary material

We describe the dynamical preparation of magnetic states in a strongly interacting two-component Bose gas in a harmonic trap. By mapping this system to an effective spin chain model, we obtain the dynamical spin densities and the fidelities for a few-body system. We show that the spatial profiles transit between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic states as the intraspecies interaction parameter is slowly increased., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

We study a quantum mechanical system consisting of up to three identical dipoles confined to move along a helical shaped trap. The long-range interactions between particles confined to move in this one dimension leads to an interesting effective two-particle potential with an oscillating behaviour. For this system we calculate the spectrum and the wave functions of the bound states. The full quantum solutions show clear imprints of the tendency for the system to form chains of dipoles along the helix, i.e. a configuration in which the dipoles are sitting approximately one winding of the helix apart so that they can take maximal advantage of the strong head-to-tail attraction that is a generic feature of the dipole-dipole interaction., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures and 1 table

Using the fractional statistical properties of so-called anyonic particles, we present exact solutions for up to six strongly interacting particles in one-dimensional confinement that interpolate the usual bosonic and fermionic limits. Specifically, we consider two-component mixtures of anyons and use these to eludicate the mixing-demixing properties of both balanced and imbalanced systems. Importantly, we demonstrate that the degree of demixing depends sensitively on the external trap in which the particles are confined. We also show how one may in principle probe the statistical parameter of an anyonic system by injection a strongly interacting impurity and doing spectral or tunneling measurements., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, final version with corrected equation (A3)

Cold atomic gases have provided us with a great number of opportunities for studying various physical systems under controlled conditions that are seldom offered in other fields. We are thus at the point where one can truly do quantum simulation of models that are relevant for instance in condensed-matter or high-energy physics, i.e. we are on the verge of a 'cool' quantum simulator as envisioned by Feynman. One of the avenues under exploration is the physics of one-dimensional systems. Until recently this was mostly in the many-body limit but now experiments can be performed with controllable particle numbers all the way down to the few-body regime. After a brief introduction to some of the relevant experiments, I will review recent theoretical work on one-dimensional quantum systems containing bosons, fermions, or mixtures of the two, with a particular emphasis on the case where the particles are held by an external trap., 7 pages, short review contribution to proceedings of FB21 Chicago May 18-22 2015. Revised version

The paper examines a trapped one-dimensional system of multicomponent spinless fermions that interact with a zero-range two-body potential. We show that when the repulsion between particles is very large the system can be approached analytically. To illustrate this analytical approach we consider a simple system of three distinguishable particles, which can be addressed experimentally. For this system we show that for infinite repulsion the energy spectrum is sixfold degenerate. We also show that this degeneracy is partially lifted for finitely large repulsion for which we find and describe corresponding wave functions., Paper in connection with the 22nd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Krakow, Poland, 9-13 September 2013

We consider a two-dimensional layer of dipolar particles in the regime of strong dipole moments. Here we can describe the system using classical methods and determine the crystal structure that minimizes the total energy. The dipoles are assumed to be aligned by an external field and we consider different orientations of the dipolar moments with respect to the two-dimensional plane of motion. We observe that when the orientation angle changes away from perpendicular and towards the plane, the crystal structure will change from a hexagonal form to one that has the dipoles sitting in equidistant rows, i.e. a striped configuration. In addition to calculating the crystal unit cell, we also consider the phonon spectrum and the speed of sound. As the orientation changes away from perpendicular the phonon spectrum develops local minima that are a result of the deformation to the crystal structure., 12 pages, 12 figures, 1 appendix, published version

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., 9 pages, 5 figures, published version. Supplemental material included as appendix

We use a minimal zero-range model for describing the bound state spectrum of three-body states consisting of two Cesium and one Lithium atom. Using a broad Feshbach resonance model for the two-body interactions, we show that recent experimental data can be described surprisingly well for particular values of the three-body parameter that governs the short-range behavior of the atomic potentials and is outside the scope of the zero-range model. Studying the spectrum as a function of the three-body parameter suggests that the lowest state seen in experiment could be influenced by finite range corrections. We also consider the question of Fermi degeneracy and corresponding Pauli blocking of the Lithium atoms on the Efimov states., 5 pages, 2 figures, revised version

The spectrum and properties of quantum bound states is strongly dependent on the dimensionality of space. How this comes about and how one may theoretically and experimentally study the interpolation between different dimensions is a topic of great interest in different fields of physics. In this paper we study weakly bound states of non-relativistic two and three boson systems when passing continuously from a three (3D) to a two-dimensional (2D) regime within a 'squeezed dimension' model. We use periodic boundary conditions to derive a surprisingly simple form of the three-boson Schr{\"o}dinger equation in momentum space that we solve numerically. Our results show a distinct dimensional crossover as three-boson states will either disappear into the continuum or merge with a 2D counterpart, and also a series of sharp transitions in the ratios of three-body and two-body energies from being purely 2D to purely 3D., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revised version

We consider three-body recombination into deep dimers in a mass-imbalanced two-component atomic gas. We use an optical model where a phenomenological imaginary potential is added to the lowest adiabatic hyper-spherical potential. The consequent imaginary part of the energy eigenvalue corresponds to the decay rate or recombination probability of the three-body system. The method is formulated in details and the relevant qualitative features are discussed as functions of scattering lengths and masses. We use zero-range model in analyses of recent recombination data. The dominating scattering length is usually related to the non-equal two-body systems. We account for temperature smearing which tends to wipe out the higher-lying Efimov peaks. The range and the strength of the imaginary potential determine positions and shapes of the Efimov peaks as well as the absolute value of the recombination rate. The Efimov scaling between recombination peaks is calculated and shown to depend on both scattering lengths. Recombination is predicted to be largest for heavy-heavy-light systems. Universal properties of the optical parameters are indicated. We compare to available experiments and find in general very satisfactory agreement., 16 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, revised version

We discuss the local density approximation approach to calculating the ground state energy of a one-dimensional Fermi gas containing a single impurity, and compare the results with exact numerical values that we have for up to 11 particles for general interaction strengths and up to 30 particles in the strongly interacting case. We also calculate the contact coefficient in the strongly interacting regime. The different theoretical predictions are compared to recent experimental results with few-atom systems. Firstly, we find that the local density approximation suffers from great ambiguity in the few-atom regime, yet it works surprisingly well for some models. Secondly, we find that the strong interaction theories quickly break down when the number of particles increase or the interaction strength decreases., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, final version

Three-body systems in two dimensions with zero-range interactions are considered for general masses and interaction strengths. The problem is formulated in momentum space and the numerical solution of the Schr\"odinger equation is used to study universal properties of such systems with respect to the bound-state energies. The number of universal bound states is represented in a form of boundaries in a mass-mass diagram. The number of bound states is strongly mass dependent and increases as one particle becomes much lighter than the other ones. This behavior is understood through an accurate analytical approximation to the adiabatic potential for one light particle and two heavy ones., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, published version

In one dimension, the study of magnetism dates back to the dawn of quantum mechanics when Bethe solved the famous Heisenberg model that describes quantum behaviour in magnetic systems. In the last decade, one-dimensional systems have become a forefront area of research driven by the realization of the Tonks-Girardeau gas using cold atomic gases. Here we prove that one-dimensional fermionic and bosonic systems with strong short-range interactions are solvable in arbitrary confining geometries by introducing a new energy-functional technique and obtaining the full spectrum of energies and eigenstates. As a first application, we calculate spatial correlations and show how both ferro- and anti-ferromagnetic states are present already for small system sizes that are prepared and studied in current experiments. Our work demonstrates the enormous potential for quantum manipulation of magnetic correlations at the microscopic scale., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, including methods, final version

Strongly interacting one-dimensional quantum systems often behave in a manner that is distinctly different from their higher-dimensional counterparts. When a particle attempts to move in a one-dimensional environment it will unavoidably have to interact and 'push' other particles in order to execute a pattern of motion, irrespective of whether the particles are fermions or bosons. A present frontier in both theory and experiment are mixed systems of different species and/or particles with multiple internal degrees of freedom. Here we consider trapped two-component bosons with short-range inter-species interactions much larger than their intra-species interactions and show that they have novel energetic and magnetic properties. In the strongly interacting regime, these systems have energies that are fractions of the basic harmonic oscillator trap quantum and have spatially separated ground states with manifestly ferromagnetic wave functions. Furthermore, we predict excited states that have perfect antiferromagnetic ordering. This holds for both balanced and imbalanced systems, and we show that it is a generic feature as one crosses from few- to many-body systems., 9 pages, 6 figures

The spectral flow of three-body (trimer) states consisting of two heavy (impurity) particles sitting in a condensate of light bosons is considered. Assuming that the condensate is weakly interaction and that an impurity and a boson have a zero-range two-body interaction, we use the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to determine the effective three-body potential. We solve the resulting Schr\"odinger equation numerically and determine the trimer binding energies as a function of the coherence length of the light bosonic condensate particles. The binding energy is found to be suppressed by the presence of the condensate when the energy scale corresponding to the coherence length becomes of order the trimer binding energy in the absence of the condensate. We find that the Efimov scaling property is reflected in the critical values of the condensate coherence length at which the trimers are pushed into the continuum., Comment: 10 pages including appendices, 4 figures, revised version

We study the two dimensional three-body problem in the general case of three distinguishable particles interacting through zero-range potentials. The Faddeev decomposition is used to write the momentum-space wave function. We show that the large-momentum asymptotic spectator function has the same functional form as derived previously for three identical particles. We derive analytic relations between the three different Faddeev components for three distinguishable particles. We investigate the one-body momentum distributions both analytically and numerically and analyze the tail of the distributions to obtain two- and three-body contact parameters. We specialize from the general cases to examples of two identical, interacting or non-interacting, particles. We find that the two-body contact parameter is not a universal constant in the general case and show that the universality is recovered when a subsystem is composed of two identical non-interacting particles. We also show that the three-body contact parameter is negligible in the case of one non-interacting subsystem compared to the situation where all subsystem are bound. As example, we present results for mixtures of Lithium with two Cesium or two Potassium atoms, which are systems of current experimental interest., Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures, published version

We consider a two-dimensional system of harmonically trapped particles with pseudo-spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ degree of freedom. This degree of freedom is coupled to the particle's momentum via the so-called Rashba spin-orbit interaction. We present our numerical results for a single-particle and few-particle systems, assuming the repulsive interparticle interaction to be of zero range., 4 pages, 3 figure; Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Krakow, Poland, 9-13 September 2013

The study of quantum mechanical few-body systems is a century old pursuit relevant to countless subfields of physics. While the two-body problem is generally considered to be well-understood theoretically and numerically, venturing to three or more bodies brings about complications but also a host of interesting phenomena. In recent years, the cooling and trapping of atoms and molecules has shown great promise to provide a highly controllable environment to study few-body physics. However, as is true for many systems where few-body effects play an important role the few-body states are not isolated from their many-body environment. An interesting question then becomes if or (more precisely) when we should consider few-body states as effectively isolated and when we have to take the coupling to the environment into account. Using some simple, yet non-trivial, examples I will try to suggest possible approaches to this line of research., 6 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Krakow, Poland, 9-13 September 2013

We examine a one-dimensional two-component fermionic system in a trap, assuming that all particles have the same mass and interact through a strong repulsive zero-range force. First we show how a simple system of three strongly interacting particles in a harmonic trap can be treated using the hyperspherical formalism. Next we discuss the behavior of the energy for the N-body system., Comment: 5 pages. Original paper for EPJ ST in connection with the workshop BEC2014 28-31 May 2014 in Levico Terme, Italy

We study a three-body system with zero-range interactions in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. The system consists of two spin-polarized fermions and a third particle which is distinct from two others (2+1 system). First we assume that the particles have equal masses. For this case the system in the strongly and weakly interacting limits can be accurately described using wave function factorized in hyperspherical coordinates. Inspired by this result we propose an interpolation ansatz for the wave function for arbitrary repulsive zero-range interactions. By comparison to numerical calculations, we show that this interpolation scheme yields an extremely good approximation to the numerically exact solution both in terms of the energies and also in the spin-resolved densities. As an outlook, we discuss the case of mass imbalanced systems in the strongly interacting limit. Here we find spectra that demonstrate that the triply degenerate spectrum at infinite coupling strength of the equal mass case is in some sense a singular case as this degeneracy will be broken down to a doubly degenerate or non-degenerate ground state by any small mass imbalance., Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, revised version

The nature of strongly interacting Fermi gases and magnetism is one of the most important and studied topics in condensed-matter physics. Still, there are many open questions. A central issue is under what circumstances strong short-range repulsive interactions are enough to drive magnetic correlations. Recent progress in the field of cold atomic gases allows to address this question in very clean systems where both particle numbers, interactions and dimensionality can be tuned. Here we study fermionic few-body systems in a one dimensional harmonic trap using a new rapidly converging effective-interaction technique, plus a novel analytical approach. This allows us to calculate the properties of a single spin-down atom interacting with a number of spin-up particles, a case of much recent experimental interest. Our findings indicate that, in the strongly interacting limit, spin-up and spin-down particles want to separate in the trap, which we interpret as a microscopic precursor of one-dimensional ferromagnetism in imbalanced systems. Our predictions are directly addressable in current experiments on ultracold atomic few-body systems., 12 pages, 6 figures, published version including two appendices on our new numerical and analytical approach

We investigate a two-dimensional system of with two values of the internal (spin) degree of freedom. It is confined by a deformed harmonic trap and subject to a Zeeman field, Rashba or Dresselhaus one-body spin-orbit couplings and two-body short range repulsion. We obtain self-consistent mean-field $N$-body solutions as functions of the interaction parameters. Single-particle Spectra and total energies are computed and compared to the results without interaction. We perform a statistical analysis for the distributions of nearest neighbor energy level spacings and show that quantum signatures of chaos are seen in certain parameters regimes. Furthermore, the effects of two-body repulsion on the nearest neighbor distributions are investigated. This repulsion can either promote or destroy the signatures of potential chaotic behavior depending on relative strengths of parameters. Our findings support the suggestion that cold atoms may be used to study quantum chaos both in the presence and absence of interactions., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, revised version

We investigate three-boson recombination of equal mass systems as function of (negative) scattering length, mass, finite energy, and finite temperature. An optical model with an imaginary potential at short distance reproduces experimental recombination data and allows us to provide a simple parametrization of the recombination rate as function of scattering length and energy. Using the two-body van der Waals length as unit we find that the imaginary potential range and also the potential depth agree to within thirty percent for Lithium and Cesium atoms. As opposed to recent studies suggesting universality of the threshold for bound state formation, our results suggest that the recombination process itself could have universal features., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We study two-component bosonic systems with strong inter-species and vanishing intra-species interactions. A new class of exact eigenstates is found with energies that are {\it not} sums of the single-particle energies with wave functions that have the characteristic feature that they vanish over extended regions of coordinate space. This is demonstrated in an analytically solvable model for three equal mass particles, two of which are identical bosons, which is exact in the strongly-interacting limit. We numerically verify our results by presenting the first application of the stochastic variational method to this kind of system. We also demonstrate that the limit where both inter- and intra-component interactions become strong must be treated with extreme care as these limits do not commute. Moreover, we argue that such states are generic also for general multi-component systems with more than three particles. The states can be probed using the same techniques that have recently been used for fermionic few-body systems in quasi-1D., 6 pages, 4 figures, published version

We solve the three-body bound state problem in three dimensions for mass imbalanced systems of two identical bosons and a third particle in the universal limit where the interactions are assumed to be of zero-range. The system displays the Efimov effect and we use the momentum-space wave equation to derive formulas for the scaling factor of the Efimov spectrum for any mass ratio assuming either that two or three of the two-body subsystems have a bound state at zero energy. We consider the single-particle momentum distribution analytically and numerically and analyse the tail of the momentum distribution to obtain the three-body contact parameter. Our finding demonstrate that the functional form of the three-body contact term depends on the mass ratio and we obtain an analytic expression for this behavior. To exemplify our results, we consider mixtures of Lithium with either two Caesium or Rubium atoms which are systems of current experimental interest., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 1 appendix, revised version

We consider renormalization of effective field theory interactions by discretizing the continuum on a tight-binding lattice. After studying the one-dimensional problem, we address s-wave collisions in three dimensions and relate the bare lattice coupling constants to the continuum coupling constants. Our method constitutes a very simple avenue for the systematic renormalization in effective field theory, and is especially useful as the number of interaction parameters increases., Comment: 7 pages, 0 figures

We consider one-dimensional tubes containing bosonic polar molecules. The long-range dipole-dipole interactions act both within a single tube and between different tubes. We consider arbitrary values of the externally aligned dipole moments with respect to the symmetry axis of the tubes. The few-body structures in this geometry are determined as function of polarization angles and dipole strength by using both essentially exact stochastic variational methods and the harmonic approximation. The main focus is on the three, four, and five-body problems in two or more tubes. Our results indicate that in the weakly-coupled limit the inter-tube interaction is similar to a zero-range term with a suitable rescaled strength. This allows us to address the corresponding many-body physics of the system by constructing a model where bound chains with one molecule in each tube are the effective degrees of freedom. This model can be mapped onto one-dimensional Hamiltonians for which exact solutions are known., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, revised version

The experimental revolution in ultracold atomic gas physics over the past decades have brought tremendous amounts of new insight to the world of degenerate quantum systems. Here we compare and constrast the developments of cold atomic gases with the physics of nuclei since many concepts, techniques, and nomenclatures are common to both fields. However, nuclei are finite systems with interactions that are typically much more complicated than those of ultracold atomic gases. The simularities and differences must therefore be carefully addressed for a meaningful comparison and to facilitate fruitful crossdisciplinary activity. Universal results from atomic physics should have impact in certain limits of the nuclear domain. In particular, with advances in the trapping of few-body atomic systems we expect a more direct exchange of ideas and results., Comment: 68 pages, 14 figures, abridged abstract

Strongly interacting particles in one dimension subject to external confinement have become a topic of considerable interest due to recent experimental advances and the development of new theoretical methods to attack such systems. In the case of equal mass fermions or bosons with two or more internal degrees of freedom, one can map the problem onto the well-known Heisenberg spin models. However, many interesting physical systems contain mixtures of particles with different masses. Therefore, a generalization of the recent strong-coupling techniques would be highly desirable. This is particularly important since such problems are generally considered non-integrable and thus the hugely successful Bethe ansatz approach cannot be applied. Here we discuss some initial steps towards this goal by investigating small ensembles of one-dimensional harmonically trapped particles where pairwise interactions are either vanishing or infinitely strong with focus on the mass-imbalanced case. We discuss a (semi)-analytical approach to describe systems using hyperspherical coordinates where the interaction is effectively decoupled from the trapping potential. As an illustrative example we analyze mass-imbalanced four-particle two-species mixtures with strong interactions between the two species. For such systems we calculate the energies, densities and pair-correlation functions., 12 pages, 9 figures, 2 appendices, revised version with minor corrections to figures

We calculate shallow three-body bound states in the universal regime, defined by Efimov, with inclusion of both scattering length and effective range parameters. The universal spectrum is recovered for the least bound states, whereas for larger binding energies we find corrections to the universal scaling laws. We recover known results for broad Feshbach resonances with small effective range, whereas in the case of narrow resonances we find a distinct non-monotonic behavior of the threshold at which the lowest Efimov trimer merges with the three-body continuum. To address the issue of the physical origin of the three-body parameter we provide a physically clear model for the relation between three-body physics and typical two-body atom-atom interactions. Our results demonstrate that experimental information from narrow Feshbach resonances and/or mixed systems are of vital importance to pin down the relation of two- and three-body physics in atomic systems., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, 1 appendix, accepted version

We consider spin-1/2 Fermi gases in arbitrary, integer or non-integer spatial dimensions, interacting via a Dirac delta potential. We first generalize the method of Tan's distributions and implement short-range boundary conditions to arbitrary dimension and we obtain a set of universal relations for the Fermi gas. Three-dimensional scattering under very general conditions of transversal confinement is described by an effectively reduced-dimensional scattering length, which we show depends on the three-dimensional scattering length in a universal way. Our formula for non-integer dimensions interpolates between the known results in integer dimensions 1, 2 and 3. Without any need to solve the associated multichannel scattering problem, we find that confinement-induced resonances occur in all dimensions different from D=2, while reduced-dimensional contacts, related to the tails of the momentum distributions, are connected to the three-dimensional contact by a correction factor of purely geometric origin., Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures

The momentum distribution is a powerful probe of strongly-interacting systems that are expected to display universal behavior. This is contained in the contact parameters which relate few- and many-body properties. Here we consider a Bose gas in two dimensions and explicitly show that the two-body contact parameter is universal and then demonstrate that the momentum distribution at next-to-leading order has a logarithmic dependence on momentum which is vastly different from the three-dimensional case. Based on this, we propose a scheme for measuring the effective dimensionality of a quantum many-body system by exploiting the functional form of the momentum distribution., 8 pages, 5 figures, final version

We demonstrate that the long-lived bound states (super-molecules) can exist in the dilute limit when we tune the shape of effective potential between polar molecules by an external microwave field. Binding energies, average sizes, and phase diagrams for both s-orbital (bosons) and p-orbital (fermions) dimers are studied, together with bosonic trimer states. We explicitly show that the non- adiabatic transition rate can be easily tuned small for such ground state super-molecules, so that the system can be stable from collapse even near the associated potential resonance. Our results, therefore, suggest a feasible cold molecule system to investigate both novel few-body and many-body physics (for example, the p-wave BCS-BEC crossover for fermions and the paired condensate for bosons) that can not be easily accessed in single species atomic gases., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We consider bound states of asymmetric three-body systems confined to two dimensions. In the universal regime, two energy ratios and two mass ratios provide complete knowledge of the three-body energy measured in units of one two-body energy. The lowest number of stable bound states is produced when one mass is larger than two similar masses. We focus on selected asymmetric systems of interest in cold atom physics. The scaled three-body energy and the two scaled two-body energies are related through an equation for a supercircle whose radius increases almost linearly with three-body energy. The exponents exhibit an increasing behavior with three-body energy. The mass dependence is highly non-trivial. We give a simple relation that predicts the universal three-body energy., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, final version

We consider a spin-orbit coupled system of particles in an external trap that is represented by a deformed harmonic oscillator potential. The spin-orbit interaction is a Rashba interaction that does not commute with the trapping potential and requires a full numerical treatment in order to obtain the spectrum. The effect of a Zeeman term is also considered. Our results demonstrate that variable spectral gaps occur as a function of strength of the Rashba interaction and deformation of the harmonic trapping potential. The single-particle density of states and the critical strength for superfluidity vary tremendously with the interaction parameter. The strong variations with Rashba coupling and deformation implies that the few- and many-body physics of spin-orbit coupled systems can be manipulated by variation of these parameters., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, published version

The virial expansion method is applied within a harmonic approximation to an interacting N-body system of identical fermions. We compute the canonical partition functions for two and three particles to get the two lowest orders in the expansion. The energy spectrum is carefully interpolated to reproduce ground state properties at low temperature and the non-interacting large temperature limit of constant virial coefficients. This resembles the smearing of shell effects in finite systems with increasing temperature. Numerical results are discussed for the second and third virial coefficients as function of dimension, temperature, interaction, and the transition temperature between low and high energy limits., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, published version