Imbalanced thee-component Fermi gas with attractive interactions: Multiple FFLO-pairing, Bose-Fermi and Fermi-Fermi mixtures versus collapse and phase separation

We present a detailed study of the population imbalanced three-component Hubbard chain with attractive interactions. Such a system can be realized experimentally with three different hyperfine states of ultra cold $^6$Li atoms in an optical lattice. We find that there are different phases that compete with each other in this system: A molecular superfluid phase in which the three fermion species pair up to form molecules (trions), a usual pairing phase involving two species with exactly opposite momenta, and a more exotic generalized Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase consisting of three competing pairing tendencies with different non-zero center-of-mass momenta. At large attractive interactions the system exhibits strong tendencies towards collapse and phase separation. Employing the density-matrix-renormalization-group-method (DMRG) to determine the decay exponents of the various correlators we establish the phase diagram of this model for different fillings and interactions. We also discuss the experimentally relevant situation in a trap and report the existence of an additional region where two species are dynamically balanced.

The antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice in a magnetic field

We study the field dependence of the antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice by means of exact diagonalizations. In a first part, we calculate the spin-wave velocity, the spin-stiffness, and the magnetic susceptibility and thus determine the microscopic parameters of the low-energy long-wavelength description. In a second part, we present a comprehensive study of dynamical spin correlation functions for magnetic fields ranging from zero up to saturation. We find that at low fields, magnons are well defined in the whole Brillouin zone, but the dispersion is substantially modified by quantum fluctuations compared to the classical spectrum. At higher fields, decay channels open and magnons become unstable with respect to multi-magnon scattering. Our results directly apply to inelastic neutron scattering experiments.

The FFLO state in the one-dimensional attractive Hubbard model and its fingerprint in the spatial noise correlations

We explore the pairing properties of the one-dimensional attractive Hubbard model in the presence of finite spin polarization. The correlation exponents for the most important fluctuations are determined as a function of the density and the polarization. We find that in a system with spin population imbalance, Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-type pairing at wavevector Q=|k_{F,uparrow}-k_{F,downarrow}| is always dominant and there is no Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit. We then investigate the case of weakly coupled 1D systems and determine the region of stability of the 1D FFLO phase. This picture is corroborated by density-matrix-renormalization-group (DMRG) simulations of the spatial noise correlations in uniform and trapped systems, unambiguously revealing the presence of fermion pairs with nonzero momentum Q. This opens up an interesting possibility for experimental studies of FFLO states.