We investigate within density functional theory various physical properties of the zero-temperature unitary Fermi gas which critically depend on the presence of a dispersive gradient term in the equation of state. First, we consider the unitary Fermi superfluid gas confined to a semi-infinite domain and calculate analytically its density profile and surface tension. Then we study the quadrupole modes of the superfluid system under harmonic confinement finding a reliable analytical formula for the oscillation frequency, which reduces to the familiar Thomas-Fermi one in the limit of a large number of atoms. Finally, we discuss the formation and propagation of dispersive shock waves in the collision between two resonant fermionic clouds, and compare our findings with recent experimental results.
We study the propagation of dispersive waves in superfluid Fermi gases in the BEC-BCS crossover. Unlike in other superfluid systems, where dispersive waves have already been studied and observed, Fermi gases can exhibit a subsonic dispersion relation for which the dispersive wave pattern appears at the tail of the wave front. We show that this property can be used to distinguish between a subsonic and a supersonic dispersion relation at unitarity.
Dynamics of shock waves in a superfluid unitary Fermi gas
利用序参量方程研究了超流幺正费米气体中排斥势引发的激波的形成和动力学。在理论框架中，由量子压力项介导的激波正则化过程是纯色散的。我们的结果与Joseph { \it et al}的实验结果一致。[Phys. Rev. Lett. { \bf 106}，150401（2011）]。我们发现，在实验中观察到的盒状密度峰由许多涡环，由于横向不稳定性的色散冲击波。此外，我们研究了从声波到亚音速冲击波的过渡，通过增加排斥势的强度，并显示出强烈的波前的传播速度的质的变化。在相对较小的强度区域，速度随着强度的增加而降低到声速以下，这是一种标度行为，而在较大的区域，速度几乎保持不变，这被发现是与涡环扩散的膨胀速度相同。
We directly observe the hydrodynamic linear response of a unitary Fermi gas confined in a box potential and subject to a spatially periodic optical potential that is translated into the cloud at speeds ranging from subsonic to supersonic. We show that the time-dependent change of the density profile is sensitive to the thermal conductivity, which controls the relaxation rate of the temperature gradients and hence the responses arising from adiabatic and isothermal compression.
Spectral study of the pseudogap in unitary Fermi gases
Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学物理科学学院和微尺度物质科学国家研究中心）；Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Science and CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学上海量子科学研究与卓越中心及中科院量子信息与量子物理学前沿卓越创新中心）；Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学合肥国家实验室）
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phonon mode in a unitary Fermi gas. Using two-photon Bragg spectroscopy, we measure excitation spectra at a momentum of approximately half the Fermi momentum, both above and below the superfluid critical temperature $T_\mathrm{c}$. Below $T_\mathrm{c}$, the dominant excitation is the Bogoliubov-Anderson (BA) phonon mode, driven by gradients in the phase of the superfluid order parameter. The temperature dependence of the BA phonon is consistent with a theoretical model based on the quasiparticle random phase approximation in which the dom…
We measure radiofrequency (rf) spectra of the homogeneous unitary Fermi gas at temperatures ranging from the Boltzmann regime through quantum degeneracy and across the superfluid transition. For all temperatures, a single spectral peak is observed. Its position smoothly evolves from the bare atomic resonance in the Boltzmann regime to a frequency corresponding to nearly one Fermi energy at the lowest temperatures. At high temperatures, the peak width reflects the scattering rate of the atoms, while at low temperatures, the width is set by the size of fermion pairs. Above the superfluid transit…
The growth rate of the out-of-time-ordered correlator in a N-flavor Fermi gas is investigated and the Lyapunove exponent $λ_L$ is calculated to the order of $1/N$. We find that the Lyapunove exponent monotonically increases as the the interaction strength increases from the BCS limit to the unitary region. At the unitarity the Lyapunove exponent increases while the temperature drops and it can reach to the order of $λ_L\sim T$ around the critical temperature for the $N=1$ case. The system scrambles faster for stronger pairing fluctuations. At the BCS limit, the Lyapunov exponent behaviors as $…
We compare recent experimental results [Science 375, 528 (2022)] of the superfluid unitary Fermi gas near the critical temperature with a thermodynamic model based on elementary excitations of the system. We find very good agreement between experimental data and our theory for several quantities such as first sound, second sound, and superfluid fraction. We also show that mode mixing between first and second sound occurs. Finally, we characterize the response amplitude to a density perturbation: close to the critical temperature both first and second sound can be excited through a density pert…
Quantum Monte Carlo techniques are employed to study the properties of polarons in an ultracold Fermi gas, at $T= 0,$ and in the unitary regime using both a zero-range model and a square-well potential. For a fixed density, the potential range is varied and results are extrapolated and compared against a zero-range model. A discussion regarding the choice of an interacting potential with a finite range is presented. We compute the polaron effective mass, the polaron binding energy, and the effective coupling between them. The latter is obtained using the Landau-Pomeranchuk's weakly interacting…
We present an alternative way of computing nonrelativistic single-particle spectra from holography. To this end, we introduce a mass gap in a holographic Dirac semimetal and subsequently study the nonrelativistic limit of the resulting spectral functions. We use this method to compute the momentum distributions and the equation of state of our nonrelativistic fermions, of which the latter can be used to extract all thermodynamic properties of the system. We find that our results are universal and reproduce many experimentally and theoretically known features of an ultracold Fermi gas at unitar…
A new excitation mode has been predicted to exist in the unitary Fermi gas. It has a form of a spin-polarized impurity, which was dubbed as ferron. It is characterized by a closed nodal surface of the pairing field surrounding a partially spin-polarized superfluid region, where the phase differs by $π$. In this paper, we discuss the effect of temperature on the generation of the ferron and the adiabaticity of the spin-polarizing potential together with ferron's ground state properties.
A detailed description is given of the phase diagram for a two-component unitary Fermi gas with mass and population imbalance, for both homogeneous and trapped systems. This aims at providing quantitative benchmarks for the normal-to-superfluid phase transition of a mass-imbalanced Fermi gas in the temperature-polarization parameter space. A self-consistent t-matrix approach is adopted, which has already proven to accurately describe the thermodynamic properties of the mass and population balanced unitary Fermi gas. Our results provide a guideline for the ongoing experiments on heteronuclear F…
In this work we establish constraints on the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity $η$ in the superfluid phase of a dilute Fermi gas in the unitary limit. Our results are based on analyzing experiments that measure the aspect ratio of a deformed cloud after release from an optical trap. We discuss how to apply the two-fluid formalism to the unitary gas, and provide a suitable parametrization of the equation of state. We show that in expansion experiments the difference between the normal and superfluid velocities remains small, and can be treated as a perturbation. We find that expansi…
We demonstrate the existence of a new type of spatially localized excitations in the unitary Fermi gas: spin polarized droplets with a peculiar internal structure involving the abrupt change of the pairing phase at the surface of the droplet. It resembles the structure of the Josephson-$π$ junction occurring when a slice of a ferromagnet is sandwiched between two superconductors. The stability of the impurity is enhanced by the mutual interplay between the polarization effects and the pairing field, resulting in an exceptionally long-lived state. The prospects for its realization in experiment…
We analytically study quantum dissipative dynamics described by the Caldirola-Kanai model with inter-particle interactions. We have found that the dissipative quantum dynamics of the Caldirola-Kanai model can be exactly mapped to a dissipationless quantum dynamics under a negative external harmonic potential, even when the particles are strongly interacting. In particular, we show that the mapping is valid for the unitary Fermi gas, which is relevant for cold atoms and nuclear matters.
We theoretically study the pairing behavior of the unitary Fermi gas in the normal phase. Our analysis is based on the static spin susceptibility, which characterizes the response to an external magnetic field. We obtain this quantity by means of the complex Langevin approach and compare our calculations to available literature data in the spin-balanced case. Furthermore, we present results for polarized systems, where we complement and expand our analysis at high temperature with high-order virial expansion results. The implications of our findings for the phase diagram of the spin-polarized …
Single-particle spectral density of the unitary Fermi gas: Novel approach based on the operator product expansion, sum rules and the maximum entropy method
We study three-body loss in an ultracold mixture of a thermal Bose gas and a degenerate Fermi gas. We find that at unitarity, where the interspecies scattering length diverges, the usual inverse-square temperature scaling of the three-body loss found in non-degenerate systems is strongly modified and reduced with the increasing degeneracy of the Fermi gas. While the reduction of loss is qualitatively explained within the few-body scattering framework, a remaining suppression provides evidence for the long-range RKKY interactions mediated by fermions between bosons. Our model based on RKKY inte…
We non-perturbatively study pairing in the high-temperature regime of polarized unitary two-component Fermi gases by extracting the pair-momentum distribution and shot-noise correlations. Whereas the pair-momentum distribution allows us to analyze the propagation of pairs composed of one spin-up and one spin-down fermion, shot-noise correlations provide us with a tomographic insight into pairing correlations around the Fermi surfaces associated with the two species. Assuming that the dominant pairing patterns right above the superfluid transition also govern the formation of condensates in the…
