Repulsive Fermi polarons with negative effective mass

Abstract

Recent LENS experiment on a 3D Fermi gas has reported a negative effective mass ($m^{\ast }<0$) of Fermi polarons in the strongly repulsive regime. There naturally arise a question whether the negative $m^{\ast }$ is a precursor of the instability towards phase separation (or itinerant ferromagnetism). In this work, we make use of the exact solutions to study the ground state and excitation properties of repulsive Fermi polarons in 1D, which can also exhibit a negative $m^{\ast }$ in the super Tonks-Girardeau regime. By analyzing the total spin, quasi-momentum distribution and pair correlations, we conclude that the negative $m^{\ast }$ is irrelevant to the instability towards ferromagnetism or phase separation, but rather an intrinsic feature of collective excitations for fermions in the strongly repulsive regime. Surprisingly, for large and negative $m^{\ast }$, such excitation is accompanied with a spin density modulation when the majority fermions move closer to the impurity rather than being repelled far away, contrary to the picture of phase separation. These results suggest an alternative interpretation of negative $m^{\ast }$ as observed in recent LENS experiment.

6 pages, 3 figures

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