We analyze the repulsive fermionic Hubbard model on square and cubic lattices with spin imbalance and in the presence of a parabolic confinement. We analyze the magnetic structure as a function of the repulsive interaction strength and polarization. In the first part of the paper we perform unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations for the 2D case and find that above a critical interaction strength $U_c$ the system turns ferromagnetic at the edge of the trap, in agreement with the ferromagnetic Stoner instability of a homogeneous system away from half-filling. For $U<U_c$ we find a canted antiferromagnetic structure in the Mott region in the center and a partially polarized compressible edge. The antiferromagnetic order in the Mott plateau is perpendicular to the direction of the imbalance. In this regime the same qualitative behavior is expected for 2D and 3D systems. In the second part of the paper we give a general discussion of magnetic structures above $U_c$. We argue that spin conservation leads to nontrivial textures, both in the ferromagnetic polarization at the edge and for the Neel order in the Mott plateau. We discuss differences in magnetic structures for 2D and 3D cases.
We consider a gas of two species of fermions with population imbalance. Using the renormalization group in $d=1+ε$ dimensions, we show that for spinless fermions and $ε> 0$ a fixed point appears at finite attractive coupling where the quasiparticle residue vanishes, and identify this with the transition to Larkin--Ovchinnikov--Fulde--Ferrell order (inhomogeneous superconductivity). When the two species of fermions also carry spin degrees of freedom we find a fixed point indicating a transition to spin density wave order.
We determine the relative stability of different ground-state phases of spin-imbalanced popula- tions of attractive fermions in square lattices. The phases are systematically characterized by the symmetry of the order parameter and the real- and momentum-space structures using Hartree- Fock-Bogoliubov theory. We find several type of unidirectional Larkin-Ovchinikov-type phases. We discuss the effect of commensuration between the ordering wave vector and the density imbalance, and describe the mechanism of Fermi surface reconstruction and pairing for various orders. A robust supersolid phase is…
We present a detailed study of the population imbalanced three-component Hubbard chain with attractive interactions. Such a system can be realized experimentally with three different hyperfine states of ultra cold $^6$Li atoms in an optical lattice. We find that there are different phases that compete with each other in this system: A molecular superfluid phase in which the three fermion species pair up to form molecules (trions), a usual pairing phase involving two species with exactly opposite momenta, and a more exotic generalized Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase consisting of …
We calculate the density profiles of a trapped spin-imbalanced Fermi gas with attractive interactions in a one-dimensional optical lattice, using both the local density approximation (LDA) and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulations. Based on the exact equation of state obtained by Bethe ansatz, LDA predicts that the gas phase-separates into shells with a partially polarized core and fully paired wings, where the latter occurs below a critical spin polarization. This behavior is also seen in numerically exact DMRG calculations at sufficiently large particle numbers. Unlike the …
We study the attractive Fermi mixture of a ${}^{6}\mathrm{Li}$-${}^{40}\mathrm{K}$ gas in one dimension using the continuous matrix product states variational ansatz and obtain the $T=0$ phase diagram. We predict an axial density profile that contains four distinct phases trapped induced along one-dimensional (1D) tubes, which is more intricate than those observed in 1D mass-balanced systems or in higher-dimensional gas clouds. The parameter regimes explored are realistic in view of possible future experiments. This an application of continuous matrix product states to a nonintegrable fermioni…
We probe the superconducting gap in the zero temperature ground state of an attractively interacting spin-imbalanced two-dimensional Fermi gas with Diffusion Monte Carlo. A condensate fraction at nonzero pair momentum evidences a spatially non-uniform superconducting order parameter. Comparison with exact diagonalisation studies confirms that the nonzero condensate fraction across a range of nonzero fermion pair momenta is consistent with non-exclusive pairing between majority and minority fermions, an extension beyond FFLO theory.
Recent experiments on imbalanced Fermi gases have raised interest in the physics of an impurity immersed in a Fermi sea, the so-called Fermi polaron. In this letter, a simple theory is devised to describe dilute Fermi-polaron ensembles corresponding to the normal phase of an imbalanced Fermi gas. An exact formula is obtained for the dominant interaction between polarons, expressed solely in terms of a single polaron parameter. The physics of this interaction is identified as a signature of the Pauli exclusion principle.
We study the nature of superfluid pairing in imbalanced Fermi mixtures in two spatial dimensions. We present evidence that the combined effect of Fermi surface mismatch and order parameter fluctuations of the superfluid condensate can lead to continuous quantum phase transitions from a normal Fermi mixture to an intermediate Sarma-Liu-Wilczek superfluid with two gapless Fermi surfaces -- even when mean-field theory (incorrectly) predicts a first order transition to a phase-separated "Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer plus excess fermions" ground state. We propose a mechanism for non-Fermi liquid behav…
Weak attractive interactions in a spin-imbalanced Fermi gas induce a multi-particle instability, binding multiple fermions together. The maximum binding energy per particle is achieved when the ratio of the number of up- and down-spin particles in the instability is equal to the ratio of the up- and down-spin densities of states in momentum at the Fermi surfaces, to utilize the variational freedom of all available momentum states. We derive this result using an analytical approach, and verify it using exact diagonalization. The multi-particle instability extends the Cooper pairing instability …
We use the mean-field theory to analyze the ground-state phase diagrams of spin-orbit coupled mass-imbalanced Fermi gases throughout the BCS-BEC evolution, including both the population-balanced and -imbalanced systems. Our calculations show that the competition between the mass and population imbalance and the Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC) gives rise to very rich phase diagrams, involving normal, superfluid and phase separated regions. In addition, we find quantum phase transitions between the topologically trivial gapped superfluid and the nontrivial gapless superfluid phases, openin…
We study a two species fermion mixture with different populations on a square lattice modeled by a Hubbard Hamiltonian with on-site inter-species repulsive interaction. Such a model can be realized in a cold atom system with fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states loaded on an optical lattice and with tunable inter-species interaction strength via external fields. For a two-dimensional square lattice, when at least one of the fermion species is close to half-filling, the system is highly affected by lattice effects. With the majority species near half-filling and varying densities fo…
By using the numerically exact density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) approach, we investigate the ground states of harmonically trapped one-dimensional (1D) fermions with population imbalance and find that the Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) state, which is a condensed state of fermion pairs with nonzero center-of-mass momentum, is realized for a wide range of parameters. The phase diagram comprising the two phases of i) an LO state at the trap center and a balanced condensate at the periphery and ii) an LO state at the trap center and a pure majority component at the periphery, is obtained. The…
The effects of induced interactions are calculated in both clean and dirty situations, for balanced and imbalanced Fermi gases. We investigate the effects of nonmagnetic impurities on the induced interactions corrections to the transition temperature in the case of a balanced gas, and to the tricritical point in the case of an imbalanced Fermi gas at unitarity. We find that impurities act in detriment of the induced interactions, or particle-hole fluctuations, for the transition temperature and the tricritical point. For large impurity parameter, the particle-hole fluctuations are strongly sup…
We describe the relation between the isothermal atomic compressibility and density fluctuations in mixtures of two-component fermions with population or mass imbalance. We derive a generalized version of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem which is valid for both balanced and imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixtures. Furthermore, we show that the compressibility, its critical exponents, and phase boundaries can be extracted via an analysis of the density fluctuations as a function of population imbalance, interaction parameter or temperature. Lastly, we demonstrate that in the presence of trapping pote…
The collective excitations that minimize the Helmholtz free energy of a population-imbalanced mixture of a $^{6}$Li gas loaded in a quasi one-dimensional optical lattice are obtained. These excitations reveal a rotonic branch after solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation under a generalized random phase approximation based on a single-band Hubbard Hamiltonian. The phase diagram describing stability regions of Fulde-Farrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov and Sarma phases is also analyzed.
The induced interaction among the majority spin species, due to the presence of the minority species, is computed for the case of a population-imbalanced resonantly-interacting Fermi gas. It is shown that this interaction leads to an instability, at low temperatures, of the recently observed polaron Fermi liquid phase of strongly imbalanced Fermi gases to a p-wave superfluid state. We find that the associated transition temperature, while quite small in the weakly interacting BCS regime, is experimentally accessible in the strongly interacting unitary regime.
We use the time-dependent Bogoliubov de Gennes equations to study dark solitons in three-dimensional spin-imbalanced superfluid Fermi gases. We explore how the shape and dynamics of dark solitons are altered by the presence of excess unpaired spins which fill their low-density core. The unpaired particles broaden the solitons and suppress the transverse snake instability. We discuss ways of observing these phenomena in cold atom experiments.
We investigate the attractive Hubbard model in infinite spatial dimensions at quarter filling. By combining dynamical mean-field theory with continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo simulations in the Nambu formalism, we directly deal with the superfluid phase in the population imbalanced system. We discuss the low energy properties in the polarized superfluid state and the pseudogap behavior in the vicinity of the critical temperature.
We investigate antiferromagnetic order of repulsively interacting fermionic atoms in an optical lattice by means of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT). Special attention is paid to the case of an imbalanced mixture. We take into account the presence of an underlying harmonic trap, both in a local density approximation and by performing full Real-Space DMFT calculations. We consider the case that the particle density in the trap center is at half filling, leading to an antiferromagnetic region in the center, surrounded by a Fermi liquid region at the edge. In the case of an imbalanced mixture, …
The spectra of low-lying pair excitations for an imbalanced two-component superfluid Fermi gas are analytically derived within the path-integral formalism taking into account Gaussian fluctuations about the saddle point. The spectra are obtained for nonzero temperatures, both with and without imbalance, and for arbitrary interaction strength. On the basis of the pair excitation spectrum, we have calculated the thermodynamic parameters of state of cold fermions and the first and second sound velocities. The parameters of pair excitations show a remarkable agreement with the Monte Carlo data and…
We consider imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mixtures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species both occupying only a single hyperfine state. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be different, which leads to a spin imbalance, or spin polarization. Two different atomic species also lead to a mass imbalance. Imbalanced Fermi gases are relevant to condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and as…
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.
The proof of the Luttinger theorem, which was originally given for a normal Fermi liquid with equal spin populations formally described by the exact many-body theory at zero temperature, is here extended to an approximate theory given in terms of a "conserving" approximation also with spin imbalanced populations. The need for this extended proof, whose underlying assumptions are here spelled out in detail, stems from the recent interest in superfluid trapped Fermi atoms with attractive inter-particle interaction, for which the difference between two spin populations can be made large enough th…
The induced intraspecies interactions among the majority species, mediated by the minority species, is computed for a population-imbalanced two-component Fermi gas. Although the Feshbach-resonance mediated interspecies interaction is dominant for equal populations, leading to singlet s-wave pairing, we find that in the strongly imbalanced regime the induced intraspecies interaction leads to p-wave pairing and superfluidity of the majority species. Thus, we predict that the observed spin-polaron Fermi liquid state in this regime is unstable to p-wave superfluidity, in accordance with the result…
We investigate thermodynamics and quantum criticality of strongly attractive Fermi gases confined in a one-dimensional (1D) harmonic trap. Finite temperature density profiles, entropy, compressibility and susceptibility of the trapped gas are studied using analytic results for the thermodynamics within the local density approximation. We demonstrate that current experiments are capable of measuring universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid physics and quantum criticality of 1D strongly interacting Fermi gases. The results provide insights on recent measurements of key features of the phase diagram o…
We present an overview of recent developments in species-imbalanced ("polarized") Feshbach-resonant Fermi gases. We summarize the current status of thermodynamics of these systems in terms of a phase diagram as a function of the Feshbach resonance detuning, polarization and temperature. We review instabilities of the s-wave superfluidity across the BEC-BCS crossover to phase separation, FFLO states, polarized molecular superfluidity and the normal state, driven by the species imbalance. We discuss different models and approximations of this system and compare their predictions to current exper…
The temperature dependence of the thermodynamic potential of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the specific heat, and the quark effective mass are calculated for imbalanced quark matter in the limit of a large number of quark flavors (large-$N_F$), which corresponds to the random phase approximation. Also a generalization of the relativistic Landau effective-mass relation in the imbalanced case is given, which is then applied to this thermodynamic potential.
Ground state Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) theory is applied to imbalanced spin-1/2 one-dimensional Fermi systems that are spatially confined by either a harmonic or a hard-wall trapping potential. It has been hoped that such systems, which can be realized using ultracold atomic gases, would exhibit the long-sought-after Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluid phase. The HFB formalism generalizes the standard Bogoliubov quasi-particle transformation, by allowing for Cooper pairing to exist between all possible single-particle states, and accounts for the effects of the inhomogeneous…
We investigate a population-imbalanced two-species fermionic system where the resonantly-paired fermions combine to form bosonic molecules via Feshbach interaction. We study the dynamics of the intrinsic quantum fluctuations of the system. It is shown that the natural fluctuations of the condensate fraction consists of a fixed number of periodic components : indicating that these oscillations do not die out, and are sustained in the mean field dynamics of the system. These frequency components bear distinct signatures of the nature of pairing present in the system. We describe how a time depen…
We study the superfluid properties of two-dimensional spin-population-imbalanced Fermi gases to explore the interplay between the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition and the possible instability towards the Fulde-Ferrell (FF) state. By the mean-field approximation together with quantum fluctuations, we obtain phase diagrams as functions of temperature, chemical potential imbalance and binding energy. We find that the fluctuations change the mean-field phase diagram significantly. We also address possible effects of the phase separation and/or the anisotropic FF phase to the …
We investigate a mixture of ultracold fermionic $^{40}$K atoms and weakly bound $^{6}$Li$^{40}$K dimers on the repulsive side of a heteronuclear atomic Feshbach resonance. By radio-frequency spectroscopy we demonstrate that the normally repulsive atom-dimer interaction is turned into a strong attraction. The phenomenon can be understood as a three-body effect in which two heavy $^{40}$K fermions exchange the light $^{6}$Li atom, leading to attraction in odd partial-wave channels (mainly p-wave). Our observations show that mass imbalance in a fermionic system can profoundly change the character…
A single down spin Fermion with an attractive, zero range interaction with a Fermi sea of up-spin Fermions forms a polaronic quasiparticle. The associated quasiparticle weight vanishes beyond a critical strength of the attractive interaction, where a many-body bound state is formed. From a variational wavefunction in the molecular limit, we determine the critical value for the polaron to molecule transition. The value agrees well with the diagrammatic Monte Carlo results of Prokof'ev and Svistunov and is consistent with recent rf-spectroscopy measurements of the quasiparticle weight by Schirot…
It is quite common that several different phases exist simultaneously in a system of trapped quantum gases of ultra-cold atoms. One such example is the strongly-interacting Fermi gas with two imbalanced spin species, which has received a great amount of attention due to the possible presence of exotic superfluid phases. By employing novel numerical techniques and algorithms, we self-consistently solve the Bogoliubov de-Gennes equations, which describe Fermi superfluids in the mean-field framework. From this study, we investigate the novel phases of spin-imbalanced Fermi gases and examine the v…
We study theoretically the collective mode spectrum of a strongly imbalanced two-component unitary Fermi gas in a cigar-shaped trap, where the minority species forms a gas of polarons. We describe the collective breathing mode of the gas in terms of the Fermi liquid kinetic equation taking collisions into account using the method of moments. Our results for the frequency and damping of the longitudinal in-phase breathing mode are in good quantitative agreement with an experiment by Nascimbène et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 170402 (2009)] and interpolate between a hydrodynamic and a collisionles…
We study a two-component quasi-two-dimensional Fermi gas with imbalanced spin populations. We probe the gas at different interaction strengths and polarizations by measuring the density of each spin component in the trap and the pair momentum distribution after time of flight. For a wide range of experimental parameters, we observe in-trap phase separation characterized by the appearance of a spin-balanced condensate surrounded by a polarized gas. Our momentum space measurements indicate pair condensation in the imbalanced gas even for large polarizations where phase separation vanishes, point…
We study a trapped two-dimensional spin-imbalanced Fermi gas over a range of temperatures. In the moderate temperature regime, associated with current experiments, we find reasonable semi-quantitative agreement with the measured density profiles as functions of varying spin imbalance and interaction strength. Our calculations show that, in contrast to the three-dimensional case, the phase separation which appears as a spin balanced core, can be associated with non-condensed fermion pairs. We present predictions at lower temperatures where a quasi-condensate will first appear, based on the pair…
We apply the diagrammatic Monte Carlo approach to three-dimensional Fermi-polaron systems with mass-imbalance, where an impurity interacts resonantly with a noninteracting Fermi sea whose atoms have a different mass. This method allows to go beyond frequently used variational techniques by stochastically summing all relevant impurity Feynman diagrams up to a maximum expansion order limited by the sign problem. Polaron energy and quasiparticle residue can be accurately determined over a broad range of impurity masses. Furthermore, the spectral function of an imbalanced polaron demonstrates the …
Polarons can serve as an ideal platform to identify few-body correlations in tackling complex many-body problems. In this work, we reveal various crystalline few-body correlations smoothly emergent from the mass-imbalanced Fermi polarons in two dimensions. A unified variational approach up to three particle-hole excitations allows us to extract the dominant dimer, trimer or tetramer correlation in a single framework. When the fermion-impurity mass ratio is beyond certain critical value, the Fermi polaron is found to undergo a smooth crossover, instead of a sharp transition, from the polaronic …
We propose and analyze a variational wave function for a population-imbalanced one-dimensional Fermi gas that allows for Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) type pairing correlations among the two fermion species, while also accounting for the harmonic confining potential. In the strongly interacting regime, we find large spatial oscillations of the order parameter, indicative of an FFLO state. The obtained density profiles versus imbalance are consistent with recent experimental results as well as with theoretical calculations based on combining Bethe ansatz with the local density approxi…
We analyze the phase structure of mass- and spin-imbalanced unitary Fermi gases in harmonic traps. To this end, we employ Density Functional Theory in the local density approximation. Depending on the values of the control parameters measuring mass and spin imbalance, we observe that three regions exist in the trap, namely: a superfluid region at the center, surrounded by a mixed region of resonantly interacting spin-up and spin-down fermions, and finally a fully polarized phase surrounding the previous two regions. We also find regimes in the phase diagram where the existence of a superfluid …
We calculate the zero-temperature equation of state of mass-imbalanced resonant Fermi gases in an ab initio fashion, by implementing the recent proposal of imaginary-valued mass difference to bypass the sign problem in lattice Monte Carlo calculations. The fully non-perturbative results thus obtained are analytically continued to real mass imbalance to yield the physical equation of state, providing predictions for upcoming experiments with mass-imbalanced atomic Fermi gases. In addition, we present an exact relation for the rate of change of the equation of state at small mass imbalances, sho…
In a Fermi superfluid increasing population imbalance leads initially to reduction of the transition temperature, then the appearance of modulated Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states, and finally the suppression of pairing itself. For interaction strength such that the `balanced' system has a normal state pseudogap, increasing imbalance reveals anomalous spectral behavior. At a fixed weak imbalance (small polarization) the stable homogeneous superfluid occurs only above a certain temperature. The density of states has a minimum at the Fermi level, then a weak peak {\it within the ga…
Recently Mora and Chevy [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 230402 (2010), arXiv:1003.0213v2], in studying the energy of an atomic Fermi gas consisting of a majority species, 1, and a minority species, 2, showed that, due to interatomic interactions, the energy density E of the gas has a contribution of the form E^(2)= f n_2^2 /2, where n_i is the density of species i. They attribute this term to a `modification of the single polaron properties due to Pauli blocking'. In this Comment, we demonstrate that E^(2) may equivalently be understood in terms of the familiar interaction between minority atoms induce…
We theoretically study a possible new pairing mechanism for a two-dimensional population imbalanced Fermi gas with short-range repulsive interactions which can be realized on the upper branch of a Feshbach resonance. We use a well-controlled renormalization group approach, which allows an unbiased study of the instabilities of imbalanced Fermi liquid without assumption of a broken symmetry and gives a numerical calculation of the transition temperature from microscopic parameters. Our results show a leading superfluid instability in the p-wave channel for the majority species. The correspondin…
The zero-temperature phase diagrams of imbalanced fermions in 3D optical lattices are investigated to evaluate the validity of the Fermi-Hubbard model. It is found that depending on the filling factor, s-wave scattering strength and lattice potential, the system may fall into the normal($N$) phase, magnetized superfluid(SF$_M$) or phase separation of $N$ and BCS state. By tuning these parameters, the superfluidity could be favorable by enhanced effective couplings or suppressed by the increased band gap. The phase profiles in the presence of a harmonic trap are also investigated under LDA, whi…
Constraints in the dynamics of quantum many-body systems can dramatically alter transport properties and relaxation timescales even in the absence of static disorder. Here, we report on the observation of such constrained dynamics arising from the distinct mobility of two species in the one-dimensional mass-imbalanced Fermi-Hubbard model, realized with ultracold ytterbium atoms in a state-dependent optical lattice. By displacing the trap potential and monitoring the subsequent dynamical response of the system, we identify suppressed transport and slow relaxation with a strong dependence on the…
In this paper we present a Monte Carlo calculation of the critical temperature and other thermodynamic quantities for the unitary Fermi gas with a population imbalance (unequal number of fermions in the two spin components). We describe an improved worm type algorithm that is less prone to autocorrelations than the previously available methods and show how this algorithm can be applied to simulate the unitary Fermi gas in presence of a small imbalance. Our data indicates that the critical temperature remains almost constant for small imbalances $h=Δμ/ε_F\lessapprox0.2$. We obtain the continuum…
We investigate the properties of a spin-imbalanced and rotating unitary Fermi gas. Using a density functional theory (DFT), we provide insight into states that emerge as a result of a competition between Abrikosov lattice formation, spatial phase separation and the emergence of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state. A confrontation of the experimental data [M. Zwierlein et al., Science 311, 492 (2006)] with theoretical predictions provides a remarkable qualitative agreement. In case of gas confined in a harmonic trap, the phase separation into a superfluid core populated by the Abrikos…
We model the one-dimension (1D) to three-dimension (3D) crossover in a cylindrically trapped Fermi gas with attractive interactions and spin-imbalance. We calculate the mean-field phase diagram, and study the relative stability of exotic superfluid phases as a function of interaction strength and temperature. For weak interactions and low density, we find 1D-like behavior, which repeats as a function of the chemical potential as new channels open. For strong interactions, mixing of single-particle levels gives 3D-like behavior at all densities. Furthermore, we map the system to an effective 1D…
We study pairing formation and the appearance of induced spin-triplet p-wave superfluidity in dilute three-dimensional imbalanced Fermi gases in the presence of a uniform non-Abelian gauge field. This gauge field generates a synthetic Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction which has remarkable consequences in the induced p-wave pairing gaps. Without the synthetic gauge field, the p-wave pairing occurs in one of the components due to the induced (second-order) interaction via an exchange of density fluctuations in the other component. We show that this p-wave superfluid gap induced by density fluct…
We obtain the phase diagram of spin-imbalanced interacting Fermi gases from measurements of density profiles of $^6$Li atoms in a harmonic trap. These results agree with, and extend, previous experimental measurements. Measurements of the critical polarization at which the balanced superfluid core vanishes generally agree with previous experimental results and with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations in the BCS and unitary regimes. We disagree with the QMC results in the BEC regime, however, where the measured critical polarizations are greater than theoretically predicted. We also measure …
We investigate properties of spin-imbalanced ultracold Fermi gas in a large range of spin polarizations at low temperatures. We present results of microscopic calculations based on mean-field and density functional theory approaches, with no symmetry constraints. At low polarization values we predict the structure of the system as consisting of several spin-polarized droplets. As the polarization increases, the system self-organizes into a disordered structures similar to liquid crystals, and energetically they can compete with ordered structures such as grid-like domain walls. At higher polar…
We investigate the superfluid-to-normal zero temperature quantum phase transitions of asymmetric two-component Fermi gases as a function of the chemical potential imbalance $h$. The calculations are performed for homogeneous and trapped imbalanced systems. We concentrate at unitarity, characterized by a divergent interaction parameter $k_F a$, where most of the current experiments are realized. For homogeneous systems, we determine the critical chemical potential imbalance $h_c$ at which possible phase transitions occur. In the case of trapped gases, we show how $h_c$ can be consistently deter…
We study a two-dimensional Fermi gas with an attractive interaction subjected to synthetic magnetic fields, which are assumed to be mutually antiparallel for two different spin components with population imbalance. By employing the mean-field approximation, we show that the Fulde-Ferrell state is energetically favored over the Larkin-Ovchinnikov state in the weak-coupling limit. We then elucidate the zero-temperature phase diagram in the space of attraction and two chemical potentials analytically at weak coupling as well as numerically beyond it. Rich structures consisting of quantum Hall ins…
