Fermionization in one-dimensional cold atom systems

Abstract

Recent developments in experimental techniques have made it possible to use magnetic fields to tune interactions between trapped cold atoms with different spin components allowing for detailed experimental investigations of the properties of quantum mechanical few-body systems. In this thesis we investigate the properties of two-component cold atoms trapped in a harmonic oscillator potential with a zero range interaction of arbitrary strength between the different species. In the limit of infinite interaction the atoms will tend to avoid each other. This is reminiscent of the Pauli principle and we will address differences and similarities to a system of identical fermions. Exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in a harmonic oscillator basis is used to obtain the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the system and we also employ numerical methods borrowed from nuclear physics to generate effective interactions using unitary transformations. This method proves to be very effective for improving the convergence and the computation time is significantly decreased even for very strongly interacting systems.