We consider a dilute atomic gas comprising two species of Fermions with unequal concentrations. We study at zero temperature the atom‐molecule mixture with inter‐species low‐energy scatterings induced by a Feshbach resonance. To examine the stability of this superfluid, we calculate the chemical potential and the superfluid density for fixed individual concentrations. We find that the system can have distinct properties compared to the ordinary Bose‐Fermi mixture due to the unbound fermions.
Thermodynamic properties of a Fermi system close to the unitarity limit, where the 2-body scattering length a approaches +/-infinity, are studied in the high temperature Boltzmann regime. For dilute systems the virial expansion coefficients in the Boltzmann regime are expected, from general arguments, to be universal. A model independent finite temperature T calculation of the third virial coefficient b3(T) is presented. At the unitarity limit, b3infinity approximately 1.11 is a universal number. The energy density up to the third virial expansion is derived. These calculations are of interest in dilute neutron matter and could be tested in current atomic experiments on dilute Fermi gases near the Feshbach resonance.
It has long been known that particles with short-range repulsive interactions in spatial dimension
d=1 form universal quantum liquids in the low density limit: all properties can be related to those of the spinless free Fermi gas. Previous renormalization-group (RG) analyses demonstrated that this universality is described by a RG fixed point, infrared stable for
d<2, of the zero density gas. We show that for
d>2 the same fixed point describes the universal properties of particles with short-range attractive interactions near a Feshbach resonance; the fixed point is now infrared unstable, and the relevant perturbation is the detuning of the resonance. Some exponents are determined exactly, and the same expansion in powers of $(d\ensuremath{-}2)$ applies for scaling functions for
d<2 and
d>2. A separate exact RG analysis of a field theory of the particles coupled to ``molecules'' finds an alternative description of the same fixed point, with identical exponents; this approach yields a $(4\ensuremath{-}d)$ expansion which agrees with the recent results of Nishida and Son [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 050403 (2006)]. The existence of the RG fixed point implies a universal phase diagram as a function of density, temperature, population imbalance, and detuning; in particular, this applies to the crossover between the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid of
s-wave paired fermions. Our results open the way towards computation of these universal properties using the standard field-theoretic techniques of critical phenomena, along with a systematic analysis of corrections to universality. We also propose a
1∕N expansion [based upon models with
Sp(2N) symmetry] of the fixed point and its vicinity, and use it to obtain results for the phase diagram.
We study a dilute mixture of degenerate bosons and fermions across a Feshbach resonance of the Fermi-Fermi scattering length
aF. This scattering length is renormalized by the boson-induced interaction between fermions and its value is crucial to determine the phase diagram of the system. For the mixture in a box and a positive Bose-Fermi scattering length, we show that there are three possibilities: A single uniform mixed phase, a purely fermionic phase coexisting with a mixed phase, and a purely fermionic phase coexisting with a purely bosonic one. As
1∕aF is increased from a negative value to the Feshbach resonance
(1∕aF=0), the region of pure separation increases and the other two regions are strongly reduced. Above the Feshbach resonance
(1∕aF>0), pairs of Fermi atoms become Bose-condensed molecules. We find that these molecules are fully spatially separated from the bosonic atoms when
1∕aF exceeds a critical value. For a negative Bose-Fermi scattering length we deduce the condition for collapse, which coincides with the onset of dynamical instability of the fully mixed phase. We consider also the mixture in a harmonic trap and determine the conditions for partial demixing, full demixing, and collapse. The experimental implications of our results are investigated by analyzing mixtures of $^{6}\mathrm{Li}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{23}\mathrm{Na}$ and $^{40}\mathrm{K}\text{\ensuremath{-}}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms.
We study the properties of dilute bosons immersed in a single-component Fermi sea across a broad boson-fermion Feshbach resonance. The stability of the mixture requires that the bare interaction between bosons exceeds a critical value, which is a universal function of the boson-fermion scattering length, and exhibits a maximum in the unitary region. We calculate the quantum depletion, momentum distribution, and the boson contact parameter across the resonance. The transition from condensate to molecular Fermi gas is also discussed.
We show that the thermodynamic properties of an atomic Fermi gas near the unitarity limit for Feshbach scattering is not universal as long as the resonance is narrow on the scale of the Fermi energy. In view of ongoing quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we explore this behavior within a mean-field approach extended to a finite temperature by means of a model potential, which allows for a tuning of the scattering phase shift and its energy dependence. Our results may be relevant for constructing a complete theoretical description of the crossover from a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of composite bosons to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) of Cooper pairs.