Energy, decay rate, and effective masses for a moving polaron in a Fermi sea: Explicit results in the weakly attractive limit

Christian Trefzger (1) , Yvan Castin (1)

1 LKB (Lhomond) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel

We study the properties of an impurity of mass $M$ moving through a spatially homogeneous three-dimensional fully polarized Fermi gas of particles of mass $m$. In the weakly attractive limit, where the effective coupling constant $g\to0^-$ and perturbation theory can be used, both for a broad and a narrow Feshbach resonance, we obtain an explicit analytical expression for the complex energy $\Delta E(\KK)$ of the moving impurity up to order two included in $g$. This also gives access to its longitudinal and transverse effective masses $m_\parallel^*(\KK)$, $m_\perp^*(\KK)$, as functions of the impurity wave vector $\KK$. Depending on the modulus of $\KK$ and on the impurity-to-fermion mass ratio $M/m$ we identify four regions separated by singularities in derivatives with respect to $\KK$ of the second-order term of $\Delta E(\KK)$, and we discuss the physical origin of these regions. Remarkably, the second-order term of $m_\parallel^*(\KK)$ presents points of non-differentiability, replaced by a logarithmic divergence for $M=m$, when $\KK$ is on the Fermi surface of the fermions. We also discuss the third-order contribution and relevance for cold atom experiments.

Mots clés: polaron; impurity; decay rate; complex energy; Fermi sea; effective mass

Domaines: Gaz Quantiques [cond-mat.quant-gas]

Christian Trefzger, Yvan Castin. Energy, decay rate, and effective masses for a moving polaron in a Fermi sea: Explicit results in the weakly attractive limit. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2013, 104, pp.50005. ⟨hal-00847562v3⟩