Zbigniew Idziaszek

We define a formalism of a self-consistent description of the ground state of a weakly interacting Bose system, accounting for higher order terms in expansion of energy in the diluteness parameter. The approach is designed to be applied to a Bose–Bose mixture in a regime of weak collapse where quantum fluctuations lead to stabilization of the system and formation of quantum liquid droplets. The approach is based on the generalized Gross–Pitaevskii equation accounting for quantum depletion and renormalized anomalous density terms. The equation is self-consistently coupled to modified Bogoliubov equations. We derive well defined procedure to calculate the zero temperature renormalized anomalous density—the quantity needed to correctly describe the formation of quantum liquid droplet. We pay particular attention to the case of droplets harmonically confined in some directions. The method allows to determine the Lee–Huang–Yang-type contribution to the chemical potential of inhomogeneous droplets when the local density approximation fails.

We study the beyond-mean-field corrections to the energy of a dipolar Bose gas confined to two dimensions by a box potential with dipoles oriented in plane such that their interaction is anisotropic in the two unconfined dimensions. At a critical strength of the dipolar interaction the system becomes unstable on the mean field level. We find that the ground state of the gas is strongly influenced by the corrections, leading to formation of a self-bound droplet, in analogy to the free space case. Properties of the droplet state can be found by minimizing the extended Gross–Pitaevskii energy functional. In the limit of strong confinement we show analytically that the correction can be interpreted as an effective three-body repulsion which stabilizes the gas at finite density.

We investigate confinement-induced resonances in atom-ion quantum mixtures confined in hybrid traps for small atom-ion mass ratios. Specifically, we consider an ion confined in a time-dependent radio-frequency Paul trap with linear geometry, while the atom is constrained to move into a quasi-one-dimensional optical waveguide within the ion trap. We evaluate the impact of the ion intrinsic micromotion on the resonance position. Thus, we solve the atom-ion dynamics semiclassically, namely, the atom dynamics is governed by the three-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation, whereas the ion motion is described by the classical Hamilton equations. We find that the energy of the ion provided by the oscillating radio-frequency fields can affect the resonance position substantially. Notwithstanding, the peculiar phenomenology of those resonances regarding perfect transmission and reflection is still observable. These findings indicate that the intrinsic micromotion of the ion is not detrimental for the occurrence of the resonance and that its position can be controlled by the radio-frequency fields. This provides an additional means for tuning atom-ion interactions in low spatial dimensions. The study represents an important advancement in the scattering physics of compound atomic quantum systems in time-dependent traps.

Hybrid systems of laser-cooled trapped ions and ultracold atoms combined in a single experimental setup have recently emerged as a new platform for fundamental research in quantum physics. This paper reviews the theoretical and experimental progress in research on cold hybrid ion-atom systems which aim to combine the best features of the two well-established fields. A broad overview is provided of the theoretical description of ion-atom mixtures and their applications, and a report is given on advances in experiments with ions trapped in Paul or dipole traps overlapped with a cloud of cold atoms, and with ions directly produced in a Bose-Einstein condensate. This review begins with microscopic models describing the electronic structure, interactions, and collisional physics of ion-atom systems at low and ultralow temperatures, including radiative and nonradiative charge-transfer processes and their control with magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances. Then the relevant experimental techniques and the intrinsic properties of hybrid systems are described. In particular, the impact is discussed of the micromotion of ions in Paul traps on ion-atom hybrid systems. Next, a review of recent proposals is given for using ions immersed in ultracold gases for studying cold collisions, chemistry, many-body physics, quantum simulation, and quantum computation and their experimental realizations. The last part focuses on the formation of molecular ions via spontaneous radiative association, photoassociation, magnetoassociation, and sympathetic cooling. Applications and prospects are discussed of cold molecular ions for cold controlled chemistry and precision spectroscopy.

We study liquid quantum droplets in a mixture of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates under variable confinement introduced along one or two spatial dimensions. Although the atom-atom scattering has a three-dimensional character, discreteness of the available modes in the reduced dimension(s) strongly influences the zero-point energy, which for a weakly interacting three-dimensional system is given by the Lee-Huang-Yang term. Here, we generalize the result of Lee, Huang, and Yang and calculate the higher order corrections to the mean-field energy for a single component Bose-Einstein condensate under condition of a tight confinement in one or two spatial directions. We apply our results to the two-component mixture of bosonic species under conditions favorable for the creation of quantum liquid droplets, which constitute a perfect playground for studies of the beyond mean-field effects. Our findings allow one to analyze the properties of quantum droplets at the dimensional crossover and provide demanding conditions for accessing quasilow dimensions. They also pave a way for experimental exploration of this state of matter in reduced dimensions.

Hybrid systems of ultracold atoms and trapped ions or Rydberg atoms can be useful for quantum simulation purposes. By tuning the geometric arrangement of the impurities, it is possible to mimic solid-state and molecular systems. Here, we study a single trapped atom interacting with a set of arbitrarily arranged static impurities and show that the problem admits an analytical solution. We analyze in detail the case of two impurities, finding multiple trap-induced resonances which can be used for entanglement generation. Our results serve as a building block for the studies of quantum dynamics of complex systems.