We investigate the BCS-BEC crossover in three-dimensional degenerate Fermi gases in the presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and Zeeman field. We show that the superfluid order parameter destroyed by a large Zeeman field can be restored by the SOC. With increasing strengths of the Zeeman field, there is a series of topological quantum phase transitions from a nontopological superfluid state with fully gapped fermionic spectrum to a topological superfluid state with four topologically protected Fermi points (i.e., nodes in the quasiparticle excitation gap) and then to a second topological superfluid state with only two Fermi points. The quasiparticle excitations near the Fermi points realize the long-sought low-temperature analog of Weyl fermions of particle physics. We show that the topological phase transitions can be probed using the experimentally realized momentum-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
We investigate the BCS-BEC crossover in three-dimensional degenerate Fermi gases in the presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and Zeeman field. We show that the superfluid order parameter destroyed by a large Zeeman field can be restored by the SOC. With increasing strengths of the Zeeman field, there is a series of topological quantum phase transitions from a nontopological superfluid state with fully gapped fermionic spectrum to a topological superfluid state with four topologically protected Fermi points (i.e., nodes in the quasiparticle excitation gap) and then to a second topological superfluid state with only two Fermi points. The quasiparticle excitations near the Fermi points realize the long-sought low-temperature analog of Weyl fermions of particle physics. We show that the topological phase transitions can be probed using the experimentally realized momentum-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
Spin-orbit coupled fermions offer a fascinating playground for realizing interesting topological quantum phases and the associated quantum critical phenomena. In two dimensions and in the presence of an attractive s-wave pairing interaction and a Zeeman field, spin-orbit coupled fermions can condense into a fully gapped non-Abelian topological superfluid phase separated from a conventional s-wave superfluid phase by a topological quantum phase transition. The critical point for this transition is marked by the proliferation of gapless nodal quasiparticles which can be tracked by studying the momentumresolved excitation spectrum from the center of the Brillouin zone. In three dimensions the same system goes through a series of topological quantum transitions with increasing Zeeman field and the low energy excitations in some of these phases realize the long-sought low-temperature analog of Weyl fermions of particle physics. In this talk I will describe in some detail the interesting topological phases and the associated quantum criticality that can be realized using spin-orbit coupled fermions in cold atom systems.
We theoretically investigate one-dimensional three-component spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases in the presence of the Zeeman field. By solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, we obtain the phase diagram at a given chemical potential and order parameter. We show that, with increasing the intensity of the Zeeman field, in addition to undergoing a phase transition from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to topological superfluid, similar to the two-component system, the three-component system may exhibit some other interesting topological phase transitions. For example, by appropriately adjusting the chemical potential $\ensuremath{\mu}$, the system can be in a nontrivial topological superfluid in the whole region of the Zeeman field h. It also may initially be a topological superfluid and then translate to a topologically trivial BCS superfluid with increasing the field h. Even more exotically, the system may exhibit a re-entrance behavior, being a topological superfluid at small and large fields but a topologically trivial BCS superfluid in between at a mediate Zeeman field. It can therefore have two regions with zero-energy Majorana fermions. As a consequence of these interesting topological phase transitions, the system of the three-component spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases in a certain parameter range is more optimizing for the experimental realization of the topological phase due to the smaller magnetic field needed. Thus, a promising candidate for the realization of the topological phase is proposed.
The recent experimental realization of spin-orbit coupling for ultracold atoms has generated much interest in the physics of spin-orbit-coupled degenerate Fermi gases. Although recently the BCS-BEC crossover in three-dimensional (3D) spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases has been intensively studied, the corresponding two-dimensional (2D) crossover physics has remained unexplored. In this paper, we investigate, both numerically and analytically, the BCS-BEC crossover physics in 2D degenerate Fermi gases in the presence of the Rashba type of spin-orbit coupling. We derive the mean-field gap and atom-number equations suitable for 2D spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases and solve them numerically and self-consistently, from which the dependence of the ground-state properties (chemical potential, superfluid pairing gap, ground-state energy per atom) on the system parameters (e.g., binding energy, spin-orbit-coupling strength) is obtained. Furthermore, we derive analytical expressions for these ground-state quantities, which agree well with our numerical results within a broad parameter region. Such analytical expressions also agree qualitatively with previous numerical results for 3D spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases, where analytical results are lacking. We show that, with increasing spin-orbit coupling (SOC) strength, the chemical potential is shifted by a constant determined by the SOC strength. The superfluid pairing gap is enhanced significantly in the BCS limit for strong SOC, but increases only slightly in the BEC limit.
The two-dimensional spin-imbalanced Fermi gas subject to s-wave pairing and spin-orbit coupling is considered a promising platform for realizing a topological chiral-p-wave superfluid. In the BCS limit of s-wave pairing, i.e., when Cooper pairs are only weakly bound, the system enters the topological phase via a second-order transition driven by increasing the Zeeman spin-splitting energy. Stronger attractive two-particle interactions cause the system to undergo the BCS-BEC crossover, in the course of which the topological transition becomes first order. As a result, topological and nontopological superfluids coexist in spatially separated domains in an extended region of phase space spanned by the strength of s-wave interactions and the Zeeman energy. Here we investigate this phase-coexistence region theoretically using a zero-temperature mean-field approach. Exact numerical results are presented to illustrate basic physical characteristics of the coexisting phases and to validate an approximate analytical description derived for weak spin-orbit coupling. Besides extending our current understanding of spin-imbalanced superfluid Fermi systems, the present approach also provides a platform for future studies of unconventional Majorana excitations that, according to topology, should be present at the internal interface between coexisting topological and nontopological superfluid parts of the system.
We theoretically investigate a three-dimensional Fermi gas with Rashba spin–orbit coupling in the presence of both out-of-plane and in-plane Zeeman fields. We show that, driven by a sufficiently large Zeeman field, either out-of-plane or in-plane, the superfluid phase of this system exhibits a number of interesting features, including inhomogeneous Fulde–Ferrell pairing, gapped or gapless topological order, and exotic quasi-particle excitations known as Weyl fermions that have linear energy dispersions in momentum space (i.e., massless Dirac fermions). The topological superfluid phase can have either four or two topologically protected Weyl nodes. We present the phase diagrams at both zero and finite temperatures and discuss the possibility of their observation in an atomic Fermi gas with synthetic spin–orbit coupling. In this context, topological superfluid phase with an imperfect Rashba spin–orbit coupling is also studied.
The twodimensional chiral p-wave superfluid is known to be topological, with gapless Majorana states expected to exist at its edge. The possibility to utilise such Majorana excitations as fault-tolerant quantum bits has spurred interest in robust experimental realisation of such systems. One proposed pathway is to use spin-orbit coupled and spin-imbalanced ultracold gases of fermionic atoms subject to conventional s-wave pairing, as inducing a large-enough Zeeman energy splitting between pseudo-spin-1/2 states drives the system into a topological superfluid (TSF) phase with chiral-p-wave characteristics. In this thesis, we apply and extend advanced theoretical methods to study this topological phase transition in detail. Specifically, our work elucidates what happens when the s-wave interaction strength between atoms is increased so that the system undergoes the BCS-to-BEC crossover. While previous studies have largely focused on the weakly interacting BCS regime, studying the full crossover reveals new properties of the TSF phase that may aid its experimental realisation in the future. In particular, we obtain phase diagrams in the parameter space of the s-wave interaction strength and Zeeman energy. As long as the system is in the nontopological superfluid (NSF) phase, it shows the ordinary features expected during the BCS-to-BEC crossover, such as the shrinking and disappearance of the Fermi surfaces as the s-wave interaction strength is increased. The TSF phase, however, exhibits strikingly different behavior: it retains the BCS-limit characteristics of a TSF even as the s-wave interaction strength reaches extremely large values. The phase diagrams we obtain also show that increasing the s-wave interaction strength changes the nature of the topological transition from second-order continuous to first-order. During the first-order topological transition, the system splits into coexisting regions of NSF and TSF phases. We study this phase coexistence theoretically and obtain analytical formulae that capture the behaviour of all relevant thermodynamic quantities during the first-order topological transition. In that, our work extends current fundamental knowledge about spin-imbalanced Fermi gases to situations with finite spin-orbit coupling. We also investigate the gapless edge states emerging at the system’s boundaries, as these are crucial for experiments that aim to observe topological phases and realise novel quantum-information-processing architectures. The principle of bulk-boundary correspondence guarantees that gapless Majorana excitations should be localised to the interface between coexisting NSF and TSF regions. We develop a detailed theoretical description of this novel topological interface state and compare its physical features with those exhibited by the Majorana states expected to exist at the system’s boundary with vacuum.