Microscopic pairing theory of a binary Bose mixture with interspecies attractions: bosonic BEC-BCS crossover and ultradilute low-dimensional quantum droplets

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic pairing theory for ultradilute quantum droplets in multi-dimensional Bose-Bose mixtures, revealing the BEC-BCS crossover, phase transitions, and validating results with simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a bosonic pairing theory that generalizes Bogoliubov theory, providing new insights into quantum droplets and the BEC-BCS crossover in low-dimensional systems.

Findings

Prediction of a strongly interacting Bose droplet at BEC-BCS crossover in 3D.

Excellent agreement with diffusion Monte Carlo in 1D for quantum droplet energies.

Identification of a critical interspecies attraction in 2D where droplets vanish.

Abstract

Ultradilute quantum droplets are intriguing new state of matter, in which the attractive mean-field force can be balanced by the repulsive force from quantum fluctuations to avoid collapse. Here, we present a microscopic theory of ultradilute quantum droplets in three-, one- and two-dimensional two-component Bose-Bose mixtures, by generalizing the conventional Bogoliubov theory to include the bosonic pairing arising from the interspecies attraction. Our pairing theory is fully equivalent to a variational approach and hence gives an upper bound for the energy of quantum droplets. In three dimensions, we predict the existence of a strongly interacting Bose droplet at the crossover from Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) to Bardeen--Cooper--Schrieffer (BCS) superfluids and map out the bosonic BEC-BCS crossover phase diagram. In one dimension, we find that the energy of the one-dimensional Bose droplet calculated by the pairing theory is in an excellent agreement with the latest diffusion Monte Carlo simulation {[}Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{122}, 105302 (2019){]}, for nearly all the interaction strengths at which quantum droplets exist. In two dimensions, we show that Bose droplets disappear and may turn into a soliton-like many-body bound state, when the interspecies attraction exceeds a critical value. Below the threshold, the pairing theory predicts more or less the same results as the Bogoliubov theory derived by Petrov and Astrakharchik {[}Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{117}, 100401 (2016){]}. The predicted energies from both theories are higher than the diffusion Monte Carlo results, due to the weak interspecies attraction and the increasingly important role played by the beyond-Bogoliubov-approximation effect in two dimensions.