Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 265
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30163-8

Regular Article

Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state for attractive Fermi gases in an optical lattice

Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P.R. China

^a e-mail: schen@aphy.iphy.ac.cn

Received: 9 March 2012
Received in final form: 28 August 2012
Published online: 18 October 2012

Abstract

We demonstrate that a kind of highly excited state of strongly attractive Hubbard model, named of Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state, can be realized in the spin-1/2 Fermi optical lattice system by a sudden switch of interaction from the strongly repulsive regime to the strongly attractive regime. In contrast to the ground state of the attractive Hubbard model, such a state is the lowest scattering state with no pairing between attractive fermions. With the aid of Bethe-ansatz method, we calculate energies of both the Fermi Tonks-Girardeau gas and the Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state of spin-1/2 ultracold fermions and show that both energies approach to the same limit as the strength of the interaction goes to infinity. By exactly solving the quench dynamics of the Hubbard model, we demonstrate that the Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau state can be transferred from the initial repulsive ground state very efficiently. This allows the experimental study of properties of Fermi super-Tonks-Girardeau gas in optical lattices.