Fermi spin polaron and dissipative Fermi-polaron Rabi dynamics

TL;DR

This paper theoretically studies a spin impurity in a Fermi sea, analyzing Rabi oscillations and damping at finite temperature, and compares predictions with recent ultracold atom experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a non-self-consistent T-matrix approach to analyze Fermi spin polarons with Rabi coupling at finite temperature, matching experimental results.

Findings

Damped Rabi oscillations caused by Fermi sea interactions.

Nonlinear damping effects at large Rabi coupling.

Momentum distribution reduces Rabi oscillation visibility.

Abstract

We consider a spin impurity with multiple energy levels moving in a non-interacting Fermi sea, and theoretically solve this Fermi spin polaron problem at nonzero temperature by using a non-self-consistent many-body $T$-matrix theory. We focus on the simplest case with spin half, where the two energy states of the impurity are coupled by a Rabi flip term. At small Rabi coupling, the impurity exhibits damped Rabi oscillations, where the decoherence is caused by the interaction with the Fermi sea, as recently reported in Fermi polaron experiments with ultracold atoms. We investigate the dependence of Rabi oscillations on the Rabi coupling strength and examine the additional nonlinear damping due to large Rabi coupling. At finite temperature and at nonzero impurity concentration, the impurity can acquire a pronounced momentum distribution. We show that the momentum/thermal average can sizably reduce the visibility of Rabi oscillations. We compare our theoretical predictions to the recent experimental data and find a good agreement without any adjustable parameter.