Paper detail

Borromean ground state of fermions in two dimensions

The study of quantum mechanical bound states is as old as quantum theory itself. Yet, it took many years to realize that three-body borromean systems that are bound when any two-body subsystem is unbound are abundant in nature. Here we demonstrate the existence of borromean systems of spin-polarized (spinless) identical fermions in two spatial dimensions. The ground state with zero orbital (planar) angular momentum exists in a borromean window between critical two- and three-body strengths. The doubly degenerate first excited states of angular momentum one appears only very close to the two-body threshold. They are the lowest in a possible sequence of so-called super-Efimov states. While the observation of the super-Efimov scaling could be very difficult, the borromean ground state should be observable in cold atomic gases and could be the basis for producing a quantum gas of three-body states in two dimensions.