- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Core-hole excitation dynamics of one-dimensional ultracold trapped fermions

A. Becker1,2,*, G. M. Koutentakis3,†, and P. Schmelcher1,2,‡

  • *Contact author: andre.becker@uni-hamburg.de
  • †Contact author: georgios.koutentakis@ist.ac.at
  • ‡Contact author: peter.schmelcher@uni-hamburg.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033346 – Published 22 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/njcx-z6np

Abstract

We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of core-hole excitations in a one-dimensional fermionic few-body system consisting of a spin-polarized Fermi bath coupled to a single heavy mobile impurity. The bath is initially prepared in a particle-hole configuration by emptying a selected bath single-particle orbital, while the impurity is displaced with respect to the center of the bath confinement potential. The quench dynamics are initialized by suddenly switching on the impurity-bath interaction. To resolve the resulting dynamics, we combine two complementary ab initio approaches, namely, the MultiLayer MultiConfiguration Time-Dependent Hartree method for mixtures and a multichannel Born-Oppenheimer framework. We show that the postquench response is governed by the interaction strength, impurity confinement, mass imbalance, and the location of the initially prepared hole within the Fermi sea. The density evolution and impurity center-of-mass motion reveal a competition between mixing and demixing of impurity and bath, while the von Neumann entropy demonstrates the buildup of pronounced many-body correlations. Most importantly, the occupation dynamics of the initially emptied orbital identifies deep core holes as substantially more robust against refilling than bulk or edge vacancies. Our results establish core-hole excitations as robust dynamical many-body features in trapped ultracold fermions and provide a controlled route toward probing orthogonality response, correlation buildup, and hole refilling in real time.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (46)

  1. P. Auger, Sur l’effet photoélectrique composé, J. Phys. Radium 6, 205 (1925).
  2. R. Feifel and M. N. Piancastelli, Core-level spectroscopy and dynamics of free molecules, J. Electron Spectrosc. Relat. Phenom. 183, 10 (2011).
  3. M. Tashiro, K. Ueda, and M. Ehara, Auger decay of molecular double core-hole state, J. Chem. Phys. 135, 154307 (2011).
  4. J. H. D. Eland, M. Tashiro, P. Linusson, M. Ehara, K. Ueda, and R. Feifel, Double core hole creation and subsequent Auger decay in NH3 and CH4 molecules, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 213005 (2010).
  5. L. S. Cederbaum, J. Zobeley, and F. Tarantelli, Giant intermolecular decay and fragmentation of clusters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 4778 (1997).
  6. U. Hergenhahn, Interatomic and intermolecular Coulombic decay: The early years and recent advances, J. Electron Spectrosc. Relat. Phenom. 184, 78 (2011).
  7. T. Jahnke, U. Hergenhahn, B. Winter, R. Dörner, U. Frühling, P. V. Demekhin, K. Gokhberg, L. S. Cederbaum, A. Ehresmann, A. Knie, and A. Dreuw, Interatomic and intermolecular Coulombic decay, Chem. Rev. 120, 11295 (2020).
  8. G. D. Mahan, Excitons in metals: Infinite hole mass, Phys. Rev. 163, 612 (1967).
  9. P. W. Anderson, Infrared catastrophe in Fermi gases with local scattering potentials, Phys. Rev. Lett. 18, 1049 (1967).
  10. P. Nozières and C. T. De Dominicis, Singularities in the X-ray absorption and emission of metals. III. One-body theory exact solution, Phys. Rev. 178, 1097 (1969).
  11. K. Ohtaka and Y. Tanabe, Theory of the soft-X-ray edge problem in simple metals: Historical survey and recent developments, Rev. Mod. Phys. 62, 929 (1990).
  12. J. Goold, T. Fogarty, N. Lo Gullo, M. Paternostro, and T. Busch, Orthogonality catastrophe as a consequence of qubit embedding in an ultracold Fermi gas, Phys. Rev. A 84, 063632 (2011).
  13. M. Knap, A. Shashi, Y. Nishida, A. Imambekov, D. A. Abanin, and E. Demler, Time-dependent impurity in ultracold Fermions: Orthogonality catastrophe and beyond, Phys. Rev. X 2, 041020 (2012).
  14. A. Sindona, J. Goold, N. Lo Gullo, S. Lorenzo, and F. Plastina, Orthogonality catastrophe and decoherence in a trapped-Fermion environment, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 165303 (2013).
  15. M. Cetina, M. Jag, R. S. Lous, J. T. M. Walraven, R. Grimm, R. S. Christensen, and G. M. Bruun, Decoherence of impurities in a Fermi sea of ultracold atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 135302 (2015).
  16. M. Cetina, M. Jag, R. S. Lous, I. Fritsche, J. T. M. Walraven, R. Grimm, J. Levinsen, M. M. Parish, R. Schmidt, M. Knap, and E. Demler, Ultrafast many-body interferometry of impurities coupled to a Fermi sea, Science 354, 96 (2016).
  17. P. Massignan, M. Zaccanti, and G. M. Bruun, Polarons, dressed molecules and itinerant ferromagnetism in ultracold Fermi gases, Rep. Prog. Phys. 77, 034401 (2014).
  18. R. Schmidt, M. Knap, D. A. Ivanov, J.-S. You, M. Cetina, and E. Demler, Universal many-body response of heavy impurities coupled to a Fermi sea: A review of recent progress, Rep. Prog. Phys. 81, 024401 (2018).
  19. T. Sowiński and M. Á. García-March, One-dimensional mixtures of several ultracold atoms: A review, Rep. Prog. Phys. 82, 104401 (2019).
  20. M. Taglieber, A.-C. Voigt, T. Aoki, T. W. Hänsch, and K. Dieckmann, Quantum degenerate two-species Fermi-Fermi mixture coexisting with a Bose-Einstein condensate, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 010401 (2008).
  21. T. G. Tiecke, M. R. Goosen, A. Ludewig, S. D. Gensemer, S. Kraft, S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans, and J. T. M. Walraven, Broad Feshbach resonance in the Li6−K40 mixture, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 053202 (2010).
  22. A. Ciamei, S. Finelli, A. Trenkwalder, M. Inguscio, A. Simoni, and M. Zaccanti, Exploring ultracold collisions in Li6−Cr53 Fermi mixtures: Feshbach resonances and scattering properties of a novel alkali-transition metal system, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 093402 (2022).
  23. A. Ciamei, S. Finelli, A. Cosco, M. Inguscio, A. Trenkwalder, and M. Zaccanti, Double-degenerate Fermi mixtures of Li6 and Cr53 atoms, Phys. Rev. A 106, 053318 (2022).
  24. C. Silber, S. Günther, C. Marzok, B. Deh, P. W. Courteille, and C. Zimmermann, Quantum-degenerate mixture of Fermionic lithium and Bosonic rubidium gases, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 170408 (2005).
  25. B. Deh, C. Marzok, C. Zimmermann, and P. W. Courteille, Feshbach resonances in mixtures of ultracold Li6 and Rb87 gases, Phys. Rev. A 77, 010701(R) (2008).
  26. Z.-X. Ye, L.-Y. Xie, Z. Guo, X.-B. Ma, G.-R. Wang, L. You, and M. K. Tey, Double-degenerate Bose-Fermi mixture of strontium and lithium, Phys. Rev. A 102, 033307 (2020).
  27. C. Weitenberg, M. Endres, J. F. Sherson, M. Cheneau, P. Schauß, T. Fukuhara, I. Bloch, and S. Kuhr, Single-spin addressing in an atomic Mott insulator, Nature (London) 471, 319 (2011).
  28. E. Haller, J. Hudson, A. Kelly, D. A. Cotta, B. Peaudecerf, G. D. Bruce, and S. Kuhr, Single-atom imaging of Fermions in a quantum-gas microscope, Nat. Phys. 11, 738 (2015).
  29. L. W. Cheuk, M. A. Nichols, M. Okan, T. Gersdorf, V. V. Ramasesh, W. S. Bakr, T. Lompe, and M. W. Zwierlein, Quantum-gas microscope for Fermionic atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 193001 (2015).
  30. M. Endres, H. Bernien, A. Keesling, H. Levine, E. R. Anschuetz, A. Krajenbrink, C. Senko, V. Vuletić, M. Greiner, and M. D. Lukin, Atom-by-atom assembly of defect-free one-dimensional cold atom arrays, Science 354, 1024 (2016).
  31. M. Olshanii, Atomic scattering in the presence of an external confinement and a gas of impenetrable Bosons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 938 (1998).
  32. T. Bergeman, M. G. Moore, and M. Olshanii, Atom-atom scattering under cylindrical harmonic confinement: Numerical and analytic studies of the confinement induced resonance, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 163201 (2003).
  33. C. Chin, R. Grimm, P. Julienne, and E. Tiesinga, Feshbach resonances in ultracold gases, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 1225 (2010).
  34. A. Becker, G. M. Koutentakis, and P. Schmelcher, Synthetic dimension-induced pseudo Jahn-Teller effect in one-dimensional confined Fermions, Phys. Rev. Res. 6, 013257 (2024).
  35. A. Becker, G. M. Koutentakis, and P. Schmelcher, Dynamical probe of the pseudo Jahn-Teller effect in one-dimensional confined Fermions, Phys. Rev. Res. 7, 033088 (2025).
  36. F. Serwane, G. Zürn, T. Lompe, T. B. Ottenstein, A. N. Wenz, and S. Jochim, Deterministic preparation of a tunable few-fermion system, Science 332, 336 (2011).
  37. M. Holten, L. Bayha, K. Subramanian, C. Heintze, P. M. Preiss, and S. Jochim, Observation of Pauli crystals, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 020401 (2021).
  38. S. Blatt, A. Mazurenko, M. F. Parsons, C. S. Chiu, F. Huber, and M. Greiner, Low-noise optical lattices for ultracold Li6, Phys. Rev. A 92, 021402(R) (2015).
  39. S. Krönke, L. Cao, O. Vendrell, and P. Schmelcher, Non-equilibrium quantum dynamics of ultra-cold atomic mixtures: The multi-layer multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method for Bosons, New J. Phys. 15, 063018 (2013).
  40. L. Cao, S. Krönke, O. Vendrell, and P. Schmelcher, The multi-layer multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method for Bosons: Theory, implementation, and applications, J. Chem. Phys. 139, 134103 (2013).
  41. L. Cao, V. Bolsinger, S. I. Mistakidis, G. M. Koutentakis, S. Krönke, J. M. Schurer, and P. Schmelcher, A unified ab initio approach to the correlated quantum dynamics of ultracold Fermionic and Bosonic mixtures, J. Chem. Phys. 147, 044106 (2017).
  42. M. Born and R. Oppenheimer, Zur Quantentheorie der Moleküle, Ann. Phys. 389, 457 (1927).
  43. P. A. M. Dirac, On the annihilation of electrons and protons, Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 26, 361 (1930).
  44. J. Frenkel, Wave Mechanics, Advanced General Theory (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1934), Vol. 1.
  45. T. Sowiński, T. Grass, O. Dutta, and M. Lewenstein, Few interacting fermions in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, Phys. Rev. A 88, 033607 (2013).
  46. A. Schirotzek, C.-H. Wu, A. Sommer, and M. W. Zwierlein, Observation of Fermi polarons in a tunable Fermi liquid of ultracold atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 230402 (2009).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033346– Published 22 September, 2026
  • Received 2 May 2026
  • Accepted 3 August 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation