We present detailed numerical and analytical investigations of the nonequilibrium dynamics of spin-polarized ultracold Fermi gases following a sudden switching on of the atom-atom pairing coupling strength. Within a time-dependent mean-field approach we show that on increasing the imbalance it takes longer for pairing to develop, the period of the nonlinear oscillations lengthens, and the maximum value of the pairing amplitude decreases. As expected, dynamical pairing is suppressed by the increase of the imbalance. Eventually, for a critical value of the imbalance the nonlinear oscillations do not even develop. Finally, we point out an interesting temperature-reentrant behavior of the exponent characterizing the initial instability.
We study the influence of population imbalance on the pairing, spin, and density instabilities of a two-component ideal Fermi gas after a sudden quench of interactions near a Feshbach resonance. Over a large region of parameters the pairing instability is dominated by finite-momentum pairing, suggesting the possibility of observing Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov--like states in the unstable initial dynamics. Long-wavelength density instabilities are found on the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer side of the resonance, and are interpreted as a precursor of the phase separation expected at equilibrium. On the Bose-Einstein-condensate side of the resonance, the pairing instability is present for scattering lengths larger than a critical value that is only weakly dependent on population imbalance and always smaller than the scattering length at which the Stoner-like spin instability occurs.
We study a problem of nonadiabatic superfluid dynamics of spin-orbit-coupled neutral fermions in two spatial dimensions. We focus on the two cases when the out-of-equilibrium conditions are initiated by either a sudden change of the pairing strength or the population imbalance. For the case of a zero-population imbalance and within the mean-field approximation, the nonadiabatic evolution of the pairing amplitude in a collisionless regime can be found exactly by employing the method of Lax vector construction. Our main finding is that the presence of the spin-orbit coupling significantly reduces the region in the parameter space where a steady state with periodically oscillating pairing amplitude is realized. For the collisionless dynamics initiated by a sudden disappearance of the population imbalance, we obtain an exact expression for the steady-state pairing amplitude. In the general case of quenches to a state with finite population imbalance, we show that there is a region in the steady-state phase diagram where at long times the pairing amplitude dynamics is governed by the reduced number of the equations of motion in full analogy with the exactly integrable case.
We study the superfluid behavior of a population imbalanced ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short range attractive interaction in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice, using a pairing fluctuation theory. We show that, besides widespread pseudogap phenomena and intermediate temperature superfluidity, the superfluid phase is readily destroyed except in a limited region of the parameter space. We find a new mechanism for pair hopping, assisted by the excessive majority fermions, in the presence of continuum-lattice mixing, which leads to an unusual constant Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) asymptote for T c that is independent of pairing strength. In result, on the BEC side of unitarity, superfluidity, when it exists, may be strongly enhanced by population imbalance.
We study the ground-state phase diagram of population balanced and imbalanced ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short-range attractive interaction throughout the crossover from BCS to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), in a two-dimensional (2D) optical lattice comprised of a 2D array of 1D lines. We find that the mixing of lattice and continuum dimensions, together with population imbalance, has an extraordinary effect on pairing and the superfluidity of atomic Fermi gases. In the balanced case, the superfluid ground state prevails over the majority of the phase space. However, for relatively small lattice hopping integral
t and large lattice constant
d, a pair density wave (PDW) emerges unexpectedly at intermediate coupling strength, and the nature of the in-plane and overall pairing changes from particlelike to holelike in the BCS and unitary regimes, associated with an abnormal increase in the Fermi volume with the pairing strength. In the imbalanced case, the stable polarized superfluid phase shrinks to only a small portion of the entire phase space spanned by
t,d, imbalance
p, and interaction strength
U, mainly in the bosonic regime of low
p, moderately strong pairing, relatively large
t, and small
d. Due to the Pauli exclusion between paired and excessive fermions within the confined momentum space, a PDW phase emerges and the overall pairing evolves from particlelike into holelike, as the pairing strength grows stronger in the BEC regime. In both cases, the ground-state property is largely governed by the Fermi surface topology. These findings are very different from the cases of a pure 3D continuum, a 3D lattice, or a 1D optical lattice.
Pairing in a population-imbalanced Fermi system in a two-dimensional optical lattice is studied using determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field calculations. The approximation-free numerical results show a wide range of stability of the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase. Contrary to claims of fragility with increased dimensionality, we find that this phase is stable across a wide range of values for the polarization, temperature, and interaction strength. Both homogeneous and harmonically trapped systems display pairing with finite center-of-mass momentum, with clear signatures either in momentum space or real space, which could be observed in cold-atomic gases loaded in an optical lattice. We also use the harmonic level basis in the confined system and find that pairs can form between particles occupying different levels, which can be seen as the analog of the finite center-of-mass momentum pairing in the translationally invariant case. Finally, we perform mean-field calculations for the uniform and confined systems and show the results to be in good agreement with quantum Monte Carlo. This leads to a simple picture of the different pairing mechanisms, depending on the filling and confining potential.
We study by diagrammatic means a Bose-Fermi mixture, with boson-fermion coupling tuned by a Fano-Feshbach resonance. For increasing coupling, the growing boson-fermion pairing correlations progressively reduce the boson condensation temperature and make it eventually vanish at a critical coupling. Such quantum critical point depends very weakly on the population imbalance and, for vanishing boson densities, coincides with that found for the polaron-molecule transition in a strongly imbalanced Fermi gas, thus bridging two quite distinct physical systems.