Selective insulators and anomalous responses in correlated fermions with synthetic extra dimensions

TL;DR

This paper explores how interactions and artificial gauge fields in a three-component fermionic system lead to flavor-selective phases with distinct correlation effects, revealing complex anomalous behaviors in synthetic dimensions.

Contribution

It demonstrates the emergence of flavor-selective insulating and anomalous phases in correlated fermions with synthetic dimensions using dynamical mean-field theory.

Findings

Different components show qualitative differences in correlation effects.

Large disparities in effective masses among components.

Non-monotonic occupation number behavior indicating selective instabilities.

Abstract

We study a three-component fermionic fluid in an optical lattice in a regime of intermediate-to- strong interactions allowing for Raman processes connecting the different components, similar to those used to create artificial gauge fields (AGF). Using Dynamical Mean-Field Theory we show that the combined effect of interactions and AGFs induces a variety of anomalous phases in which different components of the fermionic fluid display qualitative differences, i.e., the physics is flavor-selective. Remarkably, the different components can display huge differences in the correlation effects, measured by their effective masses and non-monotonic behavior of their occupation number as a function of the chemical potential, signaling a sort of selective instability of the overall stable quantum fluid.