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arXiv:0802.4440 · Physical Review B

Imbalanced d -wave superfluids in the BCS-BEC crossover regime at finite temperatures

Jacques Tempere, Serghei N. Klimin, J. T. Devreese, V. V. Moshchalkov

Published Apr 2, 2008• 19 citations
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Abstract

Singlet pairing in a Fermi superfluid is frustrated when the amounts of fermions of each pairing partner are unequal. The resulting ``imbalanced superfluid'' has been realized experimentally for ultracold atomic gases with $s$-wave interactions. Inspired by high-temperature superconductivity, we investigate the case of $d$-wave interactions and find marked differences from the $s$-wave superfluid. Whereas $s$-wave imbalanced Fermi gases tend to phase separate in real space, in a balanced condensate and an imbalanced normal halo, we show that the $d$-wave gas can phase separate in reciprocal space so that imbalance and superfluidity can coexist spatially. We show that the mechanism explaining this property is the creation of polarized excitations in the nodes of the gap. The Sarma mechanism, present only at nonzero temperatures for the $s$-wave case, is still applicable in the temperature zero limit for the $d$-wave case. As a result, the $d$-wave BCS superfluid is more robust with respect to imbalance and a region of the phase diagram can be identified where the $s$-wave BCS superfluidity is suppressed whereas the $d$-wave superfluidity is not. When these results are extended into the Bose--Einstein condensate limit of strongly bound molecules, the symmetry of the order parameter matters less. The effects of fluctuations beyond mean field is taken into account in the calculation of the structure factor and the critical temperature. The poles of the structure factor (corresponding to bound molecular states) are less damped in the $d$-wave case as compared to that in $s$ wave. On the BCS side of the unitarity limit, the critical temperature ${T}_{c}$ follows the temperature ${T}^{*}$ corresponding to the pair binding energy and as such will also be more robust against imbalance. Possible routes for the experimental observation of the $d$-wave superfluidity have been discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.77.134502

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Singlet pairing in a Fermi superfluid is frustrated when the amounts of fermions of each pairing partner are unequal. The resulting ``imbalanced superfluid'' has been realized experimentally for ultracold atomic gases with sss-wave interactions. Inspired by high-temperature superconductivity, we investigate the case of ddd-wave interactions and find marked differences from the sss-wave superfluid. Whereas sss-wave imbalanced Fermi gases tend to phase separate in real space, in a balanced condensate and an imbalanced normal halo, we show that the ddd-wave gas can phase separate in reciprocal space so that imbalance and superfluidity can coexist spatially. We show that the mechanism explaining this property is the creation of polarized excitations in the nodes of the gap. The Sarma mechanism, present only at nonzero temperatures for the sss-wave case, is still applicable in the temperature zero limit for the ddd-wave case. As a result, the ddd-wave BCS superfluid is more robust with respect to imbalance and a region of the phase diagram can be identified where the sss-wave BCS superfluidity is suppressed whereas the ddd-wave superfluidity is not. When these results are extended into the Bose--Einstein condensate limit of strongly bound molecules, the symmetry of the order parameter matters less. The effects of fluctuations beyond mean field is taken into account in the calculation of the structure factor and the critical temperature. The poles of the structure factor (corresponding to bound molecular states) are less damped in the ddd-wave case as compared to that in sss wave. On the BCS side of the unitarity limit, the critical temperature Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ follows the temperature T∗{T}^{*}T∗ corresponding to the pair binding energy and as such will also be more robust against imbalance. Possible routes for the experimental observation of the ddd-wave superfluidity have been discussed.
We investigate single-particle properties of a mass-imbalanced Fermi gas in the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)--BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover region. In the presence of mass imbalance, we point out that the ordinary TTT-matrix approximation, which has been extensively used to clarify various BCS-BEC crossover physics in the mass-balanced case, unphysically gives a double-valued solution in terms of the superfluid phase transition temperature Tc{T}_{\mathrm{c}}Tc​ in the crossover region. To overcome this serious problem, we include higher order strong-coupling corrections beyond the TTT-matrix level. Using this extended TTT-matrix theory, we calculate single-particle excitations in the normal state above Tc{T}_{\mathrm{c}}Tc​. The so-called pseudogap phenomena originating from pairing fluctuations are shown to be different between the light-mass component and heavy-mass component, which becomes more remarkable at higher temperatures. Since Fermi condensates with hetero-Cooper pairs have recently been discussed in various fields, such as exciton (polariton) condensates as well as color superconductivity, our results would be useful for the further development of Fermi superfluid physics, beyond the conventional superfluid state with homo-Cooper pairs.
We in this paper investigate the phase diagram associated with the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer--Bose-Einstein-condensate (BCS-BEC) crossover of a three-component ultracold superfluid Fermi gas of different chemical potentials and equal masses in two dimensions. The gap-order parameter and number densities are found analytically by using the functional-path-integral method. The balance of pairing will be broken in the free space due to the unequal chemical potentials. We obtain the same particle-number density and condensed fraction in the BCS-superfluid phase as those in a recent paper [Phys. Rev. A 83, 033630 (2011)] while the Sarma phase of the coexistence of normal and superfluid Fermi gases is characteristic of an inhomogeneous system. The minimum ratio of the BCS-superfluid phase becomes 1/3 in the BCS limit corresponding to the zero ratio in the two-component system in which the critical point of phase separation is ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{B}/{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{F}=2$, but it becomes 3 in the three-component case.
We study resonantly-paired s-wave superfluidity in a degenerate gas of two species (hyperfine states labeled by ↑, ↓) of fermionic atoms when the numbers N↑ and N↓ of the two species are unequal, i.e., the system is "polarized." We find that the continuous crossover from the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) limit of tightly-bound diatomic molecules to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) limit of weakly correlated Cooper pairs, studied extensively at equal populations, is interrupted by a variety of distinct phenomena under an imposed population difference ΔN ≡ N↑ - N↓. Our findings are summarized by a "polarization" (ΔN) versus Feshbach-resonance detuning (δ) zero-temperature phase diagram, which exhibits regions of phase separation, a periodic FFLO superfluid, a polarized normal Fermi gas and a polarized molecular superfluid consisting of a molecular condensate and a fully polarized Fermi gas. We describe numerous experimental signatures of such phases and the transitions between them, in particular focusing on their spatial structure in the inhomogeneous environment of an atomic trap. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
We investigate a two-component Fermi gas with unequal spin populations along the BCS-BEC crossover. By using the extended BCS equations and the concept of off-diagonal-long-range-order we derive a formula for the condensate number of Cooper pairs as a function of energy gap, average chemical potential, imbalance chemical potential and temperature. Then we study the zero-temperature condensate fraction of Cooper pairs by varying interaction strength and polarization, finding a depletion of the condensate fraction by increasing the population imbalance. We also consider explicitly the presence of an external harmonic confinement and we study, within the local-density approximation, the phase separation between superfluid and normal phase regions of the polarized fermionic cloud. In particular, we calculate both condensate density profiles and total density profiles from the inner superfluid core to the normal region passing for the interface, where a finite jump in the density is a clear manifestation of this phase-separated regime. Finally, we compare our theoretical results with the available experimental data on the condensate fraction of polarized 6Li atoms [Science 311, 492 (2006)]. These experimental data are in reasonable agreement with our predictions in a suitable range of polarizations, but only in the BCS side of the crossover up to unitarity.
In our recent experiments at MIT, superfluidity has been observed in a strongly interacting atomic Fermi gas. These systems constitute a novel form of matter with model character: One can vary the temperature, density and dimensionality, the number of “spin up” versus “spin down” fermions, and, most remarkably, the interactions can be precisely controlled over an enormous range. This allows to study the crossover of a Bose-Einstein condensate of tightly bound molecules to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid of long-range Cooper pairs. Superfluidity in this crossover regime is demonstrated by setting the gas under rotation and observing ordered lattices of quantized vortices [1]. Thanks to its strong interactions, the gas is a high-temperature superfluid: Scaled to the density of electrons in a metal, superfluidity would occur already far above room temperature. A new regime is entered when the number of spin up versus spin down atoms is imbalanced. In this case, not every spin up atom can find a spin down partner. The ground state of such a system has been under debate for over 40 years. We observe the breakdown of superfluidity at a critical imbalance, the Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit [2]. The superfluid gives way to an intriguing, strongly-interacting Fermi gas with unequal spin populations [3, 4].
We consider ultracold 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. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be different, leading to a spin imbalance or a polarization. In the second case, the two different species also give rise to a mass imbalance for the particles. Imbalanced Fermi mixtures play a fundamental role in condensed-matter, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Experimentally, the atomic mixtures are made strongly interacting with the use of two-channel Feshbach resonances. We start out by treating these in more detail. We review the relevant scattering theory, and apply it to the well-studied case of resonant s-wave collisions with zero angular momentum. Furthermore, we discuss the less-studied case of p-wave collisions with nonzero angular momentum, and the inhomogeneous case due to a trapping potential. Having discussed the two-body physics, we turn to the many-body physics. The pioneering experimental studies of Cooper pairing in lithium-6 mixtures with a spin imbalance were performed by Zwierlein et al. [Science 311, 492 (2006)] and Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. We study the mean-field theory for the polarized Fermi mixture to obtain a qualitative understanding of these experiments. In the unitarity limit, where the scattering length of the interatomic interaction diverges, the theory gives rise to two exotic superfluid phases that are absent in the balanced mixture. These are the gapless superfluid Sarma phase and the phase-separated phase. By using renormalization group techniques to account for the effects of strong interactions, we obtain also quantitative agreement with Monte-Carlo calculations and experiments. We then generalize our knowledge of the solely spin-imbalanced mixture to the mass-imbalanced case, where in particular the mixture consisting of lithium-6 and potassium-40 is experimentally promising. We study the mean-field phase diagram for this mixture in the unitarity limit, where we not only find phase separation and Sarma superfluidity, but also a Lifshitz point. The latter signals an instability towards a supersolid phase. We also include the effects of fluctuations, which do not alter the topology of the phase diagram. However, fluctuation effects lower the critical temperatures with an experimentally relevant factor of three. Finally, we study superfluidity in a fully polarized gas of potassium-40 atoms near a p-wave Feshbach resonance. In particular, we consider coherent Josephson oscillations between the superfluid components in the two channels of the resonance, whose frequencies contain a clear signature of the quantum phase transition that occurs as a function of applied magnetic field.