We develop a simulation method for evaporative cooling of trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures using Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin (ZNG) formalism. ZNG formalism includes the generalized GP equation and a semiclassical kinetic equation for the thermal cloud, which treats the excitations semiclassically within the Hartree Fock approximation. The generalized GP equation includes the mean field due to the thermal cloud and the source term associated with collisions between the condensate and the thermal cloud. Our method is based on the numerical approach developed by Jackson and Zaremba, which simulates the kinetic equation using test particles. A key point of our method is to mimic the evaporative cooling process by eliminating the test particles with high energy. We show that our method successfully describes condensate growth during evaporative cooling. We also numerically simulate vortex lattice formation during evaporative cooling in the presence of the rotating thermal cloud.
We consider a partially spin-polarized atomic Fermi gas in a high-aspect-ratio trap, with a flux of predominantly spin-up atoms exiting the center of the trap. We argue that such a scenario can be produced by evaporative cooling, and we find that it can result in a substantially non-equilibrium polarization pattern for typical experimental parameters. We offer this as a possible explanation for the quantitative discrepancies in recent experiments on spin-imbalanced unitary Fermi gases.
We calculate the evaporative cooling dynamics of trapped one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates for parameters leading to a range of condensates and quasicondensates in the final equilibrium state. We confirm that solitons are created during the evaporation process, but always eventually dissipate during thermalisation. The distance between solitons at the end of the evaporation ramp matches the coherence length in the final thermal state. Calculations were made using the classical fields method. They bridge the gap between the phase defect picture of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism and the long…
Degenerate quantum gases are instrumental in advancing many-body quantum physics and underpin emerging precision sensing technologies. All state-of-the-art experiments use evaporative cooling to achieve the ultracold temperatures needed for quantum degeneracy, yet evaporative cooling is extremely lossy: more than 99.9% of the gas is discarded. Such final particle number limitations constrain imaging resolution, gas lifetime, and applications leveraging macroscopic quantum coherence. Here we show that atomic Bose gases can be cooled to quantum degeneracy using real-time feedback, an entirely ne…
We propose a cooling scheme for fermionic quantum gases, based on the principles of the Peltier thermoelectric effect and energy filtering. The system to be cooled is connected to another harmonically trapped gas acting as a reservoir. The cooling is achieved by two simultaneous processes: (i) the system is evaporatively cooled and (ii) cold fermions from deep below the Fermi surface of the reservoir are injected below the Fermi level of the system, in order to fill the 'holes' in the energy distribution. This is achieved by a suitable energy dependence of the transmission coefficient connecti…
From the unified statistical thermodynamics of quantum gases, the virial coefficients of ideal Bose and Fermi gases which are trapped under generic power law potential are derived systematically. From the general result of virial coefficients, one can produce the known results in $d=3$ and $d=2$. But more importantly we found that, the virial coefficients of bosons and fermions become equal (except the the second virial coefficient, where the sign is different) when we trap the gases under harmonic potential in $d=1$. This result suggests the equivalence between Bose and Fermi gases which is a…
Atomic physics was revolutionized by the development of forced evaporative cooling: it led directly to the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum-degenerate Fermi gases, and ultracold optical lattice simulations of condensed matter phenomena. More recently, great progress has been made in the production of cold molecular gases, whose permanent electric dipole moment is expected to generate rich, novel, and controllable phases, dynamics, and chemistry in these ultracold systems. However, while many strides have been made in both direct cooling and cold-association techniques, evapor…
We study the scissors modes of dipolar boson and fermion gases trapped in a spherically symmetric potential. We use the harmonic oscillator states to solve the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation for bosons and the time-dependent Hartree-Fock equation for fermions. It is pointed out that the scissors modes of bosons and fermions can be of quite different nature.
The fluctuations in thermodynamic and transport properties in many-body systems gain importance as the number of constituent particles is reduced. Ultracold atomic gases provide a clean setting for the study of mesoscopic systems; however, the detection of temporal fluctuations is hindered by the typically destructive detection, precluding repeated precise measurements on the same sample. Here, we overcome this hindrance by utilizing the enhanced light--matter coupling in an optical cavity to perform a minimally invasive continuous measurement and track the time evolution of the atom number in…
A unified description for the Bose and Fermi gases trapped in an external generic power law potential $U=\sum_{i=1} ^d c_i |\frac{x_i}{a_i}|^{n_i}$ is presented using the grandpotential of the system in $d$ dimensional space. The thermodynamic quantities of the quantum gases are derived from the grand potential. An equivalence between the trapped Bose and Fermi gases is constructed in one dimension ($d=1$) using the Landen relation. It is also found that the established equivalence between the ideal free Bose and Fermi gases in $d=2$ (M. H. Lee, Phys. Rev. E 55, 1518 (1997)) is lost when exter…
We theoretically investigate a weakly-interacting degenerate Bose gas coupled to an empty Markovian bath. We show that in the universal phononic limit the system evolves towards an asymptotic state where an emergent temperature is set by the quantum noise of the outcoupling process. For situations typically encountered in experiments, this mechanism leads to significant cooling. Such dissipative cooling supplements conventional evaporative cooling and dominates in settings where thermalization is highly suppressed, such as in a one-dimensional quasicondensate.
We develop a practical Hartree-Fock theory for trapped Bose and Fermi gases that interact with dipole-dipole interactions. This theory is applicable at zero and finite temperature. Our approach is based on the introduction of local momentum distortion fields that characterize the exchange effects in terms of a local effective potential. We validate our theory against existing theories, finding excellent agreement with full Hartree-Fock calculations.
We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation with ultracold strontium atoms. We use the 84Sr isotope, which has a low natural abundance but offers excellent scattering properties for evaporative cooling. Accumulation in a metastable state using a magnetic-trap, narrowline cooling, and straightforward evaporative cooling in an optical trap lead to pure condensates containing 1.5x10^5 atoms. This puts 84Sr in a prime position for future experiments on quantum-degenerate gases involving atomic two-electron systems.
This brief review presents the emerging field of mesoscopic physics with cold atoms, with an emphasis on thermal and 'thermoelectric' transport, i.e. coupled transport of particle and entropy. We review in particular the comparison between theoretically predited and experimentally observed thermoelectric effects in such systems. We also show how combining well designed transport properties and evaporative cooling leads to an equivalent of the Peltier effect with cold atoms, which can be used as a new cooling procedure with improved cooling power and efficiency compared to the evaporative cooli…
We consider two separated pancake-shaped trapped gases interacting with a dipolar (either magnetic or electric) force. We study how the center of mass motion propagates from one cloud to the other as a consequence of the long-range nature of the interaction. The corresponding dynamics is fixed by the frequency difference between the in-phase and the out-of-phase center of mass modes of the two clouds, whose dependence on the dipolar interaction strength and the cloud separation is explicitly investigated. We discuss Fermi gases in the degenerate as well as in the classical limit and comment on…
Yoram Alhassid conjectured that the total energy of a harmonically trapped two-component Fermi gas with large scattering length is a linear functional of the occupation probabilities of single-particle energy eigenstates. We confirm his conjecture and derive the functional explicitly. We show that the functional applies to ALL smooth potentials having a minimum, not just harmonic traps. We also calculate the occupation probabilities of high energy states.
Ultracold atomic gases can be spined up either by confining them in rotating frame, or by introducing ``synthetic" magnetic field. In this paper, thermodynamics of rotating ideal Bose gases are investigated within truncated-summation approach which keeps to take into account the discrete nature of energy levels, rather than to approximate the summation over single-particle energy levels by an integral as does in semi-classical approximation. Our results show that Bose gases in rotating frame exhibit much stronger dependence on rotation frequency than those in ``synthetic" magnetic field. Conse…
We study the virial relations for ultracold trapped two component Fermi gases in the case of short finite range interactions. Numerical verifications for such relations are reported through the BCS-BEC crossover. As an intermediate step, it is necessary to evaluate the partial derivatives of the many body energy with respect to the inverse of the scattering length and with respect to the interaction range. They are found to have extreme values at the unitary limit. The virial results are used to check the quality of the variational wave function involved in the calculations.
We theoretically investigate the pair-superfluid phase of two-component ultracold gases with negative inter-species interactions in an optical lattice. We establish the phase diagram for filling $n=1$ at zero and finite temperature, by applying Bosonic Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, and confirm the stability of pair-superfluidity for asymmetric hopping of the two species. While the pair superfluid is found to be robust in the presence of a harmonic trap, we observe that it is destroyed already by a small population imbalance of the two species.
We theoretically address magnetic ordering at zero and finite temperature in both homogeneous and trapped Bose-Bose mixtures in optical lattices. By using Bosonic Dynamical Mean-Field Theory, we obtain the phase diagram of the homogeneous two-component Bose-Hubbard model in a three-dimensional (3D) cubic lattice, which features competing magnetic order of XY-ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic type in addition to the Mott and superfluid states. We show that these magnetic phases persist also in the presence of a harmonic trap.
We analyze the macroscopic dynamics of a Bose gas axially confined in an optical lattice with a superimposed harmonic trap, taking into account weak tunneling effect. Our results show that upon transition to the quasi-two-dimensional (2D) regime of the trapped gas, the 3D equation of state and equilibrium density profile acquire corrections from 2D many-body effects. The corresponding frequency shift in the transverse breathing mode is accessible within current facilities, suggesting a direct observation of dimensional effects. Comparisons with other relevant effects are also presented.
An expression for the dynamic density response function has been obtained for an interacting quantum gas in Random Phase Approximation (RPA) including first order self and exchange contribution. It involves the single particle wave functions and eigen values. The expression simplifies when diagonal elements are considered. The diagonal elements of the imaginary part of Fourier transformed response function is relevant in the measurement of Bragg scattering cross-section and in several other applications.
We show that there exists the inverse Kibble-Zurek scenario, when we start with an equilibrium system with broken symmetry and, by imposing perturbations, transform it to a strongly nonequilibrium symmetric state through the sequence of states with spontaneously arising topological defects. We demonstrate the inverse Kibble-Zurek scenario both experimentally, by perturbing the Bose-Einstein condensate of trapped $^{87}$Rb atoms, and also by accomplishing numerical simulations for the same setup as in the experiment, the experimental and numerical results being in good agreement with each other…
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…
The highly controllable ultracold atoms in a one-dimensional (1D) trap provide a new platform for the ultimate simulation of quantum magnetism. In this regard, the Neel-antiferromagnetism and the itinerant ferromagnetism are of central importance and great interest. Here we show that these magnetic orders can be achieved in the strongly interacting spin-1/2 trapped Fermi gases with additional p-wave interactions. In this strong coupling limit, the 1D trapped Fermi gas exhibit an effective Heisenberg spin XXZ chain in the anisotropic p-wave scattering channels. For a particular p-wave attractio…
We show that the Bose-Hubbard Model exhibits an increase in density with temperature at fixed pressure in the regular fluid regime and in the superfluid phase. The anomaly at the Bose-Einstein condensate is the first density anomaly observed in a quantum state. We propose that the mechanism underlying both the normal phase and the superfluid phase anomalies is related to zero point entropies and ground state phase transitions. A connection with the typical experimental scales and setups is also addressed. This key finding opens a new pathway for theoretical and experimental studies of water-li…
We trap individual 1D Bose gases and obtain the associated equation of state by combining calibrated confining potentials with in-situ density profiles. Our observations agree well with the exact Yang-Yang 1D thermodynamic solutions under the local density approximation. We find that our final 1D system undergoes inefficient evaporative cooling that decreases the absolute temperature, but monotonically reduces a degeneracy parameter.
I study vortex ring oscillations in a superfluid, trapped in an elongated trap, under the conditions of the Local Density Approximation. On the basis of the Hamiltonian formalism I develop a hydrodynamic theory, which is valid for an arbitrary superfluid and depends only on the equation of state. The problem is reduced to an ordinary differential equation for the ring radius. The cases of the dilute BEC and the Fermi gas at unitarity are investigated in detail. Simple analytical equations for the periods of small oscillations are obtained and the equations of non-linear dynamics are solved in …
Trapped two-component Fermi gases allow for the investigation of the so-called BCS-BEC crossover by tuning the interspecies atom-atom $s$-wave scattering length scattering $a^{(aa)}$ from attractive to repulsive, including vanishing and infinitely large values. Here, we numerically determine the energy spectrum of the equal-mass spin-balanced four-fermion system---the smallest few-particle system that exhibits BCS-BEC crossover-like behavior---as a function of $a^{(aa)}$ using the stochastic variational approach. For comparative purposes, we also treat the two- and three-particle systems. Stat…
By means of the Boltzmann-Vlasov kinetic equation we investigate dynamical properties of a trapped, one-component Fermi gas at zero temperature, featuring the anisotropic and long-range dipole-dipole interaction. To this end, we determine an approximate solution by rescaling both space and momentum variables of the equilibrium distribution, thereby obtaining coupled ordinary differential equations for the corresponding scaling parameters. Based on previous results on how the Fermi sphere is deformed in the hydrodynamic regime of a dipolar Fermi gas, we are able to implement the relaxation-time…
We study a system of dipolar molecules confined in a two-dimensional trap and subject to an optical square lattice. The repulsive long-range dipolar interaction $D/r^3$ favors an equilateral triangular arrangement of the molecules, which competes against the square symmetry of the underlying optical lattice with lattice constant $b$ and amplitude $V$. We find the minimal-energy states at the commensurate density $n = 1/b^2$ and establish the complete square-to-triangular transformation pathway of the lattice with decreasing $V$ involving period-doubled, solitonic, and distorted-triangular conf…
The properties of two-component Fermi gases with zero-range interactions are universal. We use an explicitly correlated Gaussian basis set expansion approach to investigate small equal-mass two-component Fermi gases under spherically symmetric external harmonic confinement. At unitarity, we determine the ground state energy for systems with up to ten particles interacting through finite-range two-body potentials for both even and odd number of particles. We extrapolate the energies to the zero-range limit using a novel scheme that removes the linear and, in some cases, also the quadratic depen…
We study the transition from hydrodynamic to collisionless behavior in collective modes of ultracold trapped Fermi gases. To that end, we solve the Boltzmann equation for the trapped Fermi gas via the moments method. We showed previously that it is necessary to go beyond second-order moments if one wants to reproduce the results of a numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation. Here, we will give the detailed description of the method including fourth-order moments. We apply this method to the case of realistic parameters, and compare the results for the radial quadrupole and scissors modes a…
We report on the successful extension of production of Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) to rare species. Despite its low natural abundance of 0.13%, $^{168}$Yb is directly evaporatively cooled down to BEC. Our successful demonstration encourages attempts to obtain quantum gases of radioactive atoms, which extends the possibility of quantum many-body physics and precision measurement. Moreover, a stable binary mixture of $^{168}$Yb BEC and $^{174}$Yb BEC is successfully formed.
In recent years, cold atoms could prove their scientific impact not only on ground but in microgravity environments such as the drop tower in Bremen, sounding rockets and parabolic flights. We investigate the preparation of cold atoms in an optical dipole trap, with an emphasis on evaporative cooling under microgravity. Up to $ 1\times10^{6} $ rubidium-87 atoms were optically trapped from a temporarily dark magneto optical trap during free fall in the droptower in Bremen. The efficiency of evaporation is determined to be equal with and without the effect of gravity. This is confirmed using num…
We report the realization of Bose-Einstein condensates of 39K atoms without the aid of an additional atomic coolant. Our route to Bose-Einstein condensation comprises Sub Doppler laser cooling of large atomic clouds with more than 10^10 atoms and evaporative cooling in optical dipole traps where the collisional cross section can be increased using magnetic Feshbach resonances. Large condensates with almost 10^6 atoms can be produced in less than 15 seconds. Our achievements eliminate the need for sympathetic cooling with Rb atoms which was the usual route implemented till date due to the unfav…
We investigate the Zel'dovich effect in the context of ultra-cold, harmonically trapped quantum gases. We suggest that currently available experimental techniques in cold-atoms research offer an exciting opportunity for a direct observation of the Zel'dovich effect without the difficulties imposed by conventional condensed matter and nuclear physics studies. We also demonstrate an interesting scaling symmetry in the level rearragements which has heretofore gone unnoticed.
We measure the temporal pair correlation function $g^{(2)}(τ)$ of a trapped gas of bosons above and below the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation. The measurement is performed {\it in situ} using a local, time-resolved single-atom sensitive probing technique. Third and fourth order correlation functions are also extracted. We develop a theoretical model and compare it with our experimental data, finding good quantitative agreement and highlighting the role of interactions. Our results promote temporal correlations as new observables to study the dynamics of ultracold quantum ga…
We report on the realization of a stable mixture of ultracold lithium and ytterbium atoms confined in a far-off-resonance optical dipole trap. We observe sympathetic cooling of 6Li by 174Yb and extract the s-wave scattering length magnitude |a6Li-174Yb| = (13 \pm 3)a0 from the rate of inter-species thermalization. Using forced evaporative cooling of 174Yb, we achieve reduction of the 6Li temperature to below the Fermi temperature, purely through inter-species sympathetic cooling.
The problem of particle fluctuations in arbitrary nonuniform systems with Bose-Einstein condensate is considered. This includes the case of trapped Bose atoms. It is shown that the correct description of particle fluctuations for any nonuniform system of interacting atoms always results in thermodynamically normal fluctuations.
Semi-classical evaporative cooling: classical and quantum distributions
Centro de Investigación en Computación, Instituto Politénico Nacional（国家理工学院计算研究中心）；Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学理学院）；Instituto de Química, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学化学研究所）；Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥国立自治大学物理研究所）；Investigador por México - Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México（墨西哥研究者计划-墨西哥国立自治大学物理研究所）
We use the Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism to analyze harmonically trapped Fermi gases with Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling in two dimensions. We consider both population-balanced and -imbalanced Fermi gases throughout the BCS-BEC evolution, and study the effects of spin-orbit coupling on the spontaneously induced countercirculating mass currents and the associated intrinsic angular momentum. In particular, we find that even a small spin-orbit coupling destabilizes Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-type spatially modulated superfluid phases as well as the phase-separated states against the…
We find a new physical regime in the trapped Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian using time-evolving block decimation. Between Mott-insulating and superfluid phases, the latter induced by trap compression, a spatially self-organized state appears in which non-local entropy signals entanglement between spatially distant superfluid shells. We suggest a linear rather than harmonic potential as an ideal way to observe such a self-organized system. We also explore both quantum information and thermal entropies in the superfluid regime, finding that while the former follows the density closely the latter can b…
We have analytically explored the quantum phenomenon of particle scattering by harmonically trapped Bose and Fermi gases with the short ranged (Fermi-Huang $δ^3_p$ [1]) interactions among the incident particle and the scatterers. We have predicted differential scattering cross-sections and their temperature dependence in this regard. Coherent scattering even by a single boson or fermion in the finite geometry gives rise to new tool of determining energy eigenstate of the scatterer. Our predictions on the differential scattering cross-sections, can be tested within the present day experimental …
The prospect of controlling entanglement in interacting quantum systems offers a myriad of technological and scientific promises, given the progress in experimental studies in systems such as ultracold trapped gases. This control is often challenging because of decoherence, the process by which environmental interactions create spurious entanglements that can destroy the desired entanglement. Considering the collisional decoherence that is relevant for quantum measurements utilizing scattering in one-dimensional trapped gases, here we derive a relationship between particle masses and wave pack…
We present a dispersive imaging method for trapped quantum gases based on digital off-axis holography. Both phase delay and intensity of the probe field are determined from the same image. Due to the heterodyne gain inherent to the holographic method it is possible to retrieve the phase delay induced by the atoms at probe beam doses two orders of magnitude lower than phase-contrast imaging methods. Using the full field of the probe beam we numerically correct for image defocusing.
Many strongly coupled fluids are known to share similar hydrodynamic transport properties. In this work we argue that this similarity could extend beyond hydrodynamics to transient dynamics through the presence of non-hydrodynamic modes. We review non-hydrodynamic modes in kinetic theory and gauge/gravity duality and discuss their signatures in trapped Fermi gases close to unitarity. Reanalyzing previously published experimental data, we find hints of non-hydrodynamic modes in cold Fermi gases in two and three dimensions.
We calculate the energy and the condensate fraction of a system of trapped bosons interacting via a short-range two-body potential with positive scattering length. The potential is attractive and has a two-body bound state. When the scattering length is small compared to the trap length the system is model independent: all potential models -- attractive, repulsive and zero-range -- provide similar results. When the scattering length is large the attractive model differs qualitatively from the repulsive and zero-range models. In this regime the system with attractive potential becomes independe…
Density correlations unambiguously reveal the quantum nature of matter. Here, we study correlations between measurements of density in cold-atom clouds at different times at one position, and also at two separated positions. We take into account the effects of finite-size and -duration measurements made by light beams passing through the atom cloud. We specialise to the case of Bose gases in harmonic traps above critical temperature, for weakly-perturbative measurements. For overlapping measurement regions, shot-noise correlations revive after a trap oscillation period. For non-overlapping reg…
For the quantum kinetic system modelling the Bose-Einstein Condensate that accounts for interactions between condensate and excited atoms, we use the Chapman-Enskog expansion to derive its hydrodynamic approximations, include both Euler and Navier-Stokes approximations. The hydrodynamic approximations describe not only the macroscopic behavior of the BEC but also its coupling with the non-condensates, which agrees with Landau's two fluid theory.
We study the spontaneous formation of vortices during the superfluid condensation in a trapped fermionic gas subjected to a rapid thermal quench via evaporative cooling. Our work is based on the numerical solution of the time dependent crossover Ginzburg-Landau equation coupled to the heat diffusion equation. We quantify the evolution of condensate density and vortex length as a function of a crossover phase parameter from BCS to BEC. The more interesting phenomena occur somewhat nearer to the BEC regime and should be experimentally observable; during the propagation of the cold front, the inc…
We compute the fraction of closed-channel molecules in trapped atomic Fermi gases, over the entire range of accessible fields and temperatures. We use a two-channel model of BCS--Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover theory at general temperature $T$, and show that this fraction provides a measure of the $T$ dependent pairing gap. Our calculations, containing no free parameters, are in good quantitative agreement with recent low $T$ measurements in $^6$Li. We present readily testable predictions for the dependencies of the closed-channel fraction on temperature and Fermi momentum.
We address recent momentum resolved radio frequency (RF) experiments on ultracold trapped Fermi gases of $^{40}$K. We show that momentum resolved RF probes provide measurements of the centrally important fermionic spectral function. They also serve to remove ambiguity plaguing the interpretation of momentum integrated RF experiments by establishing a clear dispersion signature of pairing. We find that the temperature dependence of the spectral function is dramatic at unitarity, and, importantly, smooth from above to below $T_c$ throughout BCS-BEC crossover. This should be tested experimentally…
We study, experimentally and theoretically, the controlled transfer of harmonically trapped ultracold gases between different quantum states. In particular we experimentally demonstrate a fast decompression and displacement of both a non-interacting gas and an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate which are initially at equilibrium. The decompression parameters are engineered such that the final state is identical to that obtained after a perfectly adiabatic transformation despite the fact that the fast decompression is performed in the strongly non-adiabatic regime. During the transfer the ato…
Vortex arrays in type-II superconductors admit the translational symmetry of an infinite system. There are cases, however, like ultra-cold trapped Fermi gases and the crust of neutron stars, where finite-size effects make it quite more complex to account for the geometrical arrangement of vortices. Here, we self-consistently generate these arrays of vortices at zero and finite temperature through a microscopic description of the non-homogeneous superfluid based on a differential equation for the local order parameter, obtained by coarse graining the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations. In thi…
We present phase diagrams for population imbalanced, trapped Fermi superfluids near unitarity. In addition to providing quantitative values for the superfluid transition temperature, the pairing onset temperature and the transition line (separating the Sarma and phase separation regimes), we study experimental signatures of these transitions based on density profiles and density differences at the center. Predictions on the BCS side of resonance show unexpected behavior, which should be searched for experimentally.
Trapped ultracold Fermi gases provide a system that can be tuned between the BCS and BEC regimes by means of a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance. Condensation of fermionic atom pairs in a $^{40}$K gas was demonstrated experimentally by a sweep technique that pairwise projects fermionic atoms onto molecules. In this paper we examine previous data obtained with this technique that probed the phase boundary in the temperature-magnetic field plane. Comparison of the $^{40}$K data to a theoretically computed phase diagram demonstrates good agreement between the two.
