Erratum: Landau Phonon-Roton Theory Revisited for Superfluid

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.260402.

Landau Phonon-Roton Theory Revisited for Superfluid

Liquid helium and spin-1/2 cold-atom Fermi gases both exhibit in their superfluid phase two distinct types of excitations, gapless phonons and gapped rotons or fermionic pair-breaking excitations. In the long wavelength limit, revising and extending the theory of Landau and Khalatnikov initially developed for helium [Zh. Exp. Teor. Fiz. 19, 637 (1949)], we obtain universal expressions for three- and four-body couplings among these two types of excitations. We calculate the corresponding phonon damping rates at low temperature and compare them to those of a pure phononic origin in high-pressure liquid helium and in strongly interacting Fermi gases, paving the way to experimental observations.

Four-body Efimov effect for three fermions and a lighter particle.

We study three same-spin-state fermions of mass M interacting with a distinguishable particle of mass m in the unitary limit where the interaction has a zero range and an infinite s-wave scattering length. We predict an interval of mass ratio 13.384

Creation and detection of a mesoscopic gas in a nonlocal quantum superposition.

We investigate the scattering of a quantum matter wave soliton on a barrier in a one-dimensional geometry, and we show that it can lead to mesoscopic quantum superposition states, where the atomic gas is in a coherent superposition of being in the half-space to the left of the barrier and being in the half-space to the right of the barrier. We propose an interferometric method to reveal the coherent nature of this superposition, and we discuss in detail the experimental feasibility.

Ground state energy of the two-dimensional weakly interacting Bose gas: first correction beyond Bogoliubov theory.

We consider the grand potential Omega of a two-dimensional weakly interacting homogeneous Bose gas at zero temperature. Building on a number-conserving Bogoliubov method for a lattice model in the grand canonical ensemble, we calculate the next order term as compared to the Bogoliubov prediction, in a systematic expansion of Omega in powers of the parameter measuring the weakness of the interaction. Our prediction is in very good agreement with recent Monte Carlo calculations.

Spectrum of light in a quantum fluctuating periodic structure.

We address the general problem of the excitation spectrum for light coupled to scatterers having quantum fluctuating positions around the sites of a periodic lattice. In addition to providing an imaginary part to the spectrum, we show that these quantum fluctuations affect the real part of the spectrum, in a way that we determine analytically. Our predictions may be observed with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, on a J = 0 --> J;{'} = 1 narrow atomic transition. As a side result, we resolve a controversy for the occurrence of a spectral gap in a fcc lattice.

Unitary quantum three-body problem in a harmonic trap.

We consider either 3 spinless bosons or 3 equal mass spin-1/2 fermions, interacting via a short-range potential of infinite scattering length and trapped in an isotropic harmonic potential. For a zero-range model, we obtain analytically the exact spectrum and eigenfunctions: for fermions all the states are universal; for bosons there is a coexistence of decoupled universal and efimovian states. All the universal states, even the bosonic ones, have a tiny 3-body loss rate. For a finite range model, we numerically find for bosons a coupling between zero angular momentum universal and efimovian states; the coupling is so weak that, for realistic values of the interaction range, these bosonic universal states remain long-lived and observable.

Quantized vortices in the ideal bose gas: a physical realization of random polynomials.

We propose a physical system allowing one to experimentally observe the distribution of the complex zeros of a random polynomial. We consider a degenerate, rotating, quasi-ideal atomic Bose gas prepared in the lowest Landau level. Thermal fluctuations provide the randomness of the bosonic field and of the locations of the vortex cores. These vortices can be mapped to zeros of random polynomials, and observed in the density profile of the gas.

Atom interferometric detection of the pairing order parameter in a Fermi gas.

We propose two interferometric schemes to experimentally detect in real space the onset of pair condensation in a two-spin-component Fermi gas. Two atomic wave packets are coherently extracted from the gas at different positions and are mixed by a matter-wave beam splitter: we show that the spatial long-range order of the atomic pairs in the gas reflects in the atom counting statistics in the beam splitter output channels. The same long-range order is also shown to create a matter-wave grating in the overlapping region of the two extracted wave packets, grating that can be revealed by a light-scattering experiment.

Matter-wave localization in disordered cold atom lattices.

We propose to observe Anderson localization of ultracold atoms in the presence of a random potential made of atoms of another species or spin state and trapped at the nodes of an optical lattice, with a filling factor less than unity. Such systems enable a nearly perfect experimental control of the disorder, while the possibility of modeling the scattering potentials by a set of pointlike ones allows an exact theoretical analysis. This is illustrated by a detailed analysis of the one-dimensional case.

Condensate statistics in one-dimensional interacting Bose gases: exact results.

Recently, a quantum Monte Carlo method alternative to the path integral Monte Carlo method was developed for solving the N-boson problem; it is based on the stochastic evolution of classical fields. Here we apply it to obtain exact results for the occupation statistics of the condensate mode in a weakly interacting trapped one-dimensional Bose gas. The temperature is varied across the critical region down to temperatures lower than the trap level spacing. We also derive the condensate statistics in the Bogoliubov theory: this reproduces the exact results at low temperature and explains the suppression of odd numbers of noncondensed particles at T approximately 0.

Vortex lattice formation in Bose-Einstein condensates.

We show that the formation of a vortex lattice in a weakly interacting Bose condensed gas can be modeled with the nonlinear Schrödinger equation for both T=0 and finite temperatures without the need for an explicit damping term. Applying a weak rotating anisotropic harmonic potential, we find numerically that the turbulent dynamics of the field produces an effective dissipation of the vortex motion and leads to the formation of a lattice. For T=0, this turbulent dynamics is triggered by a rotational dynamic instability of the condensate. For finite temperatures, noise is present at the start of the simulation and allows the formation of a vortex lattice at a lower rotation frequency, the Landau frequency. These two regimes have different vortex dynamics. We show that the multimode interpretation of the classical field is essential.