We investigate a two-species Fermi gas in which one species is confined in a two-dimensional plane (2D) or one-dimensional line (1D) while the other is free in the three-dimensional space (3D). We discuss the realization of such a system with the interspecies interaction tuned to resonance. When the mass ratio is in the range 0.0351<m_2D/m_3D<6.35 for the 2D-3D mixture or 0.00646<m_1D/m_3D<2.06 for the 1D-3D mixture, the resulting system is stable against the Efimov effect and has universal properties. We calculate key quantities in the many-body phase diagram. Other possible scale-invariant systems with short-range few-body interactions are also elucidated.
We calculate the energy of a single fermion interacting resonantly with a Fermi sea of different-species fermions in asymmetric traps, and show that finite particle numbers and the trap geometry impact the phase structure and the critical polarization. Our findings contribute to understanding some experimental discrepancies in spin-polarized Fermi gases as finite-size and confinement effects.
A review of recent BEC-BCS crossover experiments in ultracold Fermi gases is given with particular emphasis on the work performed with lithium-6 at the University of Innsbruck.
We show that two new intra-species P-wave superfluid phases appear in two-component asymmetric Fermi systems with short-range S-wave interactions. In the BEC limit, phonons of the molecular BEC induce P-wave superfluidity in the excess fermions. In the BCS limit, density fluctuations induce P-wave superfluidity in both the majority and the minority species. These phases may be realized in experiments with spin-polarized Fermi gases.
Studies of Feshbach resonance phenomena in fermionic alkali gases have drawn heavily on the intuition afforded by a Fermi-Bose theory which presents the Feshbach molecule as a featureless Bose particle. While this model may provide a suitable platform to explore the lithium-6 system, we argue that its application to potassium-40, where the hyperfine structure is inverted, is inappropriate. Introducing a three-state Fermi model, where a spin state is shared by the open and closed channel states, we show that effects of ``Pauli blocking'' are recorded in the internal structure of the condensate …
Spin-changing collisions in trapped Fermi gases may acquire a resonant character due to the compensation of quadratic Zeeman effect and trap energy. These resonances are absent in spinor condensates and pseudo-spin-1/2 Fermi gases, being a characteristic feature of high-spin Fermi gases that allows spinor physics at large magnetic fields. We analyze these resonances in detail for the case of lattice spinor fermions, showing that they permit to selectively target a spin-changing channel while suppressing all others. These resonances allow for the controlled creation of non-trivial quantum super…
We study an ultracold bose-fermi mixture in a one dimensional optical lattice. When boson atoms are heavier then fermion atoms the system is described by an adiabatic Holstein model, exhibiting a Peierls instability for commensurate fermion filling factors. A Bosonic density wave with a wavenumber of twice the Fermi wavenumber will appear in the quasi one-dimensional system.
We investigate magnetic properties of Mott-insulating phases of ultracold Bose and Fermi spinor gases in optical lattices. We consider in particular the F=2 Bose gas, and the F=3/2 and F=5/2 Fermi gases. We derive effective spin Hamiltonians for one and two atoms per site and discuss the possibilities of manipulating the magnetic properties of the system using optical Feshbach resonances. We discuss low temperature quantum phases of a 87Rb gas in the F=2 hyperfine state, as well as possible realizations of high spin Fermi gases with either 6Li or 132Cs atoms in the F=3/2 state, and with 173Yb …
We investigate the dynamics of the system of multiple bright and dark quasisolitons generated in a one-component ultracold Fermi gas via the phase imprinting technique in terms of atomic orbitals approach. In particular, we analyze the collision between two bright quasisolitons and find that quasisolitons are subject to the superposition principle.
This is an introductory lecture to the theory of degenerate Fermi gases, in the context of present experiments on atomic Fermi gases. In part one, some properties of the ideal Fermi gas are presented, including a discussion of the fluctuations of the number of fermions in a given spatial zone in 1D, 2D and 3D. In part two, two-body aspects of the interaction potential are discussed and several possible models for the interaction are analyzed, including the two-channel model for the Feshbach resonance. In part three, basic predictions of zero temperature BCS theory are presented, including a de…
Ultracold dipolar Fermi gases represent relatively unexplored, strongly correlated systems arising from long-range and anisotropic interactions. We demonstrate the possibility of a spontaneous symmetry breaking biaxial phase in these systems, which may be realized in, e.g., gases of ultracold polar molecules or strongly magnetic atoms. This biaxial nematic phase is manifest in a spontaneous distortion of the Fermi surface perpendicular to the axis of polarization. We describe these dipolar interaction induced phases using Landau Fermi liquid theory.
We study the effects of surface tension between normal and superfluid regions of a trapped Fermi gas at unitarity. We find that surface tension causes notable distortions in the shape of large aspect ratio clouds. Including these distortions in our theories resolves many of the apparent discrepancies among different experiments and between theory and experiments.
We discuss ultra-cold Fermi gases in two dimensions, which could be realized in a strongly confining one-dimensional optical lattice. We obtain the temperature versus effective interaction phase diagram for an s-wave superfluid and show that, below a certain critical temperature T_c, spontaneous vortex-antivortex pairs appear for all coupling strengths. In addition, we show that the evolution from weak to strong coupling is smooth, and that the system forms a square vortex-antivortex lattice at a lower critical temperature T_M.
We calculate the collective modes of a partially polarized Fermi gas trapped in a spherically symmetric harmonic potential. We show that the breathing mode frequency exhibits non-monotonic dependence on polarization in the entire BCS-BEC crossover region. Moreover, we find that the breathing mode can be used to distinguish between two commonly used unitary gas equations of state.
Critical velocities of superfluid Fermi gases in optical lattices are theoretically investigated across the BCS-BEC crossover. We calculate the excitation spectra in the presence of a superfluid flow in one- and two-dimensional optical lattices. It is found that the spectrum of low-lying Anderson-Bogoliubov (AB) mode exhibits a roton-like structure in the short-wavelength region due to the strong charge density wave fluctuations, and with increasing the superfluid velocity one of the roton-like minima reaches zero before the single-particle spectrum does. This means that superfluid Fermi gases…
The relaxation processes in an ultra-cold degenerate atomic Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance are considered. It is shown that the relaxation rate of the molecules being in a resonance with the atomic Fermi system is of the order of the part of the chemical potential determined by the interaction between resonance molecules. In this connection the lower part of the excitation spectrum in the system of resonance molecules is not well-defined.
We present majority and minority radiofrequency (RF) spectra of strongly interacting imbalanced Fermi gases of Li-6. We observed a smooth evolution in the nature of pairing correlations from pairing in the superfluid region to polaron binding in the highly polarized normal region. The imbalance induces quasiparticles in the superfluid region even at very low temperature. This leads to a local bimodal spectral response, which allows us to determine the superfluid gap Δand the Hartree energy U.
An evaporative cooling was performed to cool the fermionic 173Yb atoms in a crossed optical dipole trap. The elastic collision rate, which is important for the evaporation, turns out to be large enough from our study. This large collision rate leads to efficient evaporation and we have successfully cooled the atoms below 0.6 of the Fermi temperature, that is to say, to a quantum degenerate regime. In this regime, a plunge of evaporation efficiency is observed as the result of the Fermi degeneracy.
We use a T-matrix approximation to calculate the single particle spectrum of the normal state of a gas of Fermionic atoms at low temperature. In the strongly interacting regime of the polarized gas, we find that the spectrum is separated in two branches, leading to a double-peaked radiofrequency spectral feature.
The use of Feshbach resonances for tuning the interparticle interaction in ultracold Fermi gases has led to remarkable developments, in particular to the creation and Bose-Einstein condensation of weakly bound diatomic molecules of fermionic atoms. These are the largest diatomic molecules obtained so far, with a size of the order of thousands of angstroms. They represent novel composite bosons, which exhibit features of Fermi statistics at short intermolecular distances. Being highly excited, these molecules are remarkably stable with respect to collisional relaxation, which is a consequence o…
We report on the experimental realization of homogeneous two-dimensional (2D) Fermi gases trapped in a box potential. In contrast to harmonically trapped gases, these homogeneous 2D systems are ideally suited to probe local as well as non-local properties of strongly interacting manybody systems. As a first measurement, we use a local probe to extract the equation of state (EOS) of a non-interacting Fermi gas. We then perform matter wave focusing to extract its momentum distribution and directly observe Pauli blocking in a near unity occupation of momentum states. Finally, we measure the momen…
We study BCS-BEC crossover in the strongly correlated regime of two component rotating Fermi gases. We predict that the strong correlations induced by rotation will have the effect of modifying the crossover region relative to the non-rotating situation. We show via the two particle correlation function that the crossover smoothly connects the s-wave paired fermionic fractional quantum Hall state to the bosonic Laughlin state.
We investigate the superfluid transition temperature of quasi-two-dimensional imbalanced Fermi gases beyond the mean-field approximation, through the second-order (or induced) interaction effects. For a balanced Fermi system the transition temperature is suppressed by a factor $\approx 2.72$. For imbalanced Fermi systems, the polarization and transition temperature of the tricritical point are significantly reduced as the two-body binding energy $|ε_B|$ increases.
We present a unified overview, from the mean-field to the unitarity regime, of the stability of a trapped Fermi gas with short range attractive interactions. Unlike in a system of bosons, a Fermi gas is always stable in these regimes, no matter how large the particle number. However, when the interparticle spacing becomes comparable to the range of the interatomic interactions, instability is not precluded.
We consider density-imbalanced Fermi gases of atoms in the strongly interacting, i.e. unitarity, regime. The Bogoliubov-deGennes equations for a trapped superfluid are solved. They take into account the finite size of the system, as well as give rise to both phase separation and FFLO type oscillations in the order parameter. We show how radio-frequency spectroscopy reflects the phase separation, and can provide direct evidence of the FFLO-type oscillations via observing the nodes of the order parameter.
