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Unified theory of strong coupling Bose polarons: From repulsive polarons to non-Gaussian many-body bound states

Nader Mostaan1,2,3,*, Nathan Goldman3,4,5,†, and Fabian Grusdt1,2,‡

  • *Contact author: nader.mostaan@physik.uni-muenchen.de
  • †Contact author: nathan.goldman@ulb.be
  • ‡Contact author: fabian.grusdt@physik.uni-muenchen.de
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043349 – Published 31 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7vdd-8vb4

Abstract

We address the Bose polaron problem of a mobile impurity interacting strongly with a host Bose-Einstein condensate through a Feshbach resonance. On the repulsive side at strong couplings, theoretical approaches predict two distinct polaron branches corresponding to attractive and repulsive polarons, but it remains unclear how the two are related. This is partly due to the challenges resulting from a competition of strongly attractive (destabilizing) impurity-boson interactions with weakly repulsive (stabilizing) boson-boson interactions, whose interplay is difficult to describe with contemporary theoretical methods. Here, we develop a powerful variational framework that combines Gaussian correlations among impurity-boson scattering states, including up to an infinite number of bosonic excitations, with exact non-Gaussian correlations among bosons occupying an impurity-boson bound state. This variational scheme enables a full treatment of strong nonlinearities arising in the Feshbach molecule on the repulsive side of the resonance. Within this framework, we demonstrate that the interplay of impurity-induced instability and stabilization by repulsive boson-boson interactions results in a discrete set of metastable many-body bound states at intermediate energies between the attractive and repulsive polaron branches. These states exhibit strong quantum statistical characteristics in the form of non-Gaussian quantum correlations, requiring nonperturbative beyond mean-field treatments for their characterization. Furthermore, these many-body bound states have sizable molecular spectral weights, accessible via molecular spectroscopy techniques. This work provides a unified theory of attractive and repulsive Bose polarons on the repulsive side of the Feshbach resonance.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043349– Published 31 December, 2025
  • Received 14 May 2023
  • Accepted 25 November 2025
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