A Non-Gaussian Variational Approach to Fermi Polarons in One- and Two-dimensional Lattices

Abstract

We study the Fermi polaron problem of one mobile spin-up impurity immersed atop the bath consisting of spin-down fermions in one- and two-dimensional square lattices. We solve this problem by applying a variational approach with non-Gaussian states after separating the impurity and the background by the Lee-Low-Pines transformation. The ground state for a fixed total momentum can be obtained via imaginary time evolution for the variational parameters. For the one-dimensional case, the variational results are compared with numerical solutions of the matrix product state method with excellent agreement. In two-dimensional lattices, we focus on the dilute limit, and find a polaron--molecule evolution in consistence with previous results obtained by variational and quantum Monte Carlo methods for models in continuum space. Comparing to previous works, our method provides the lowest ground state energy in the entire parameter region considered, and has an apparent advantage as it does not need to assume {\it in priori} any specific form of the variational wave function.