We discuss the evolution from BCS to Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) superfluids in the presence of spin-orbit coupling for a balanced mixture of ultracold fermions. The dependence of several thermodynamic properties, such as chemical potential, order parameter, pressure, entropy, isothermal compressibility, and spin susceptibility tensor on the spin-orbit coupling and interaction parameter at low temperatures are analyzed. We studied both equal Rashba and Dresselhaus (ERD) and the Rashba-only (RO) spin-orbit coupling. Comparisons between the two cases reveal several striking differences in the corresponding thermodynamic quantities. Finally, we propose measuring the isothermal compressibility and spin susceptibility as a way of detecting the effects of the spin-orbit coupling.
We discuss topological phase transitions in ultracold Fermi superfluids induced by interactions and artificial spin-orbit fields. We construct the phase diagram for population-imbalanced systems at zero and finite temperatures, and analyze spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties to characterize various phase transitions. For balanced systems, the evolution from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer to Bose-Einstein-condensate superfluids in the presence of spin-orbit effects is only a crossover as the system remains fully gapped, even though a triplet component of the order parameter emerges in the helicity basis. However, for imbalanced populations, spin-orbit fields induce a triplet component for the order parameter in the helicity basis, and may produce nodes in the quasiparticle excitation spectrum leading to bulk topological phase transitions of the Lifshitz type. Additionally a fully gapped phase exists, where a crossover from indirect to direct gap occurs, but a topological transition to a gapped phase possessing Majorana fermion edge states does not occur.
We performed a theoretical investigation on the ground state properties of a two dimensional ultra-cold Fermi superfluid with an anisotropic spin-orbit coupling (SOC). In the absence of Zeeman field, the system evolves from weak coupling BCS regime to strongly interacting BEC regime (BCS-BEC crossover) with increasing either the two-particle interaction strength or SOC parameters. We focused on the behaviors of pairing parameter and density of states (DOS) when increasing the anisotropic parameter of the SOC. Surprisingly, we discovered that the gap parameter decreases with increasing the anisotropic parameters, but the DOS at the Fermi surface shows non-monotonic behavior as a function of the anisotropic parameter. In the presence of the Zeeman field, we discussed a particular type of topological phase transition by obtaining the analytical result of the topological invariant and directly related this quantum phase transition with a sudden change of the ground state wave-function. Effects of higher partial wave pairing terms on this topological phase transition were briefly discussed.
We analyze the evolution of superfluidity for nonzero orbital angular momentum channels from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) limit in three dimensions. First, we analyze the low-energy scattering properties of finite range interactions for all possible angular momentum channels. Second, we discuss ground-state
(T=0) superfluid properties including the order parameter, chemical potential, quasiparticle excitation spectrum, momentum distribution, atomic compressibility, ground-state energy, and low-energy collective excitations. We show that a quantum phase transition occurs for nonzero angular momentum pairing, unlike the
s-wave case where the BCS to BEC evolution is just a crossover. Third, we present a Gaussian fluctuation theory near the critical temperature
(T=Tc), and we analyze the number of bound, scattering, and unbound fermions as well as the chemical potential. Finally, we derive the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau functional near
Tc, and compare the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length with the zero-temperature average Cooper pair size.
In this Thesis we discussed ultracold Fermi gas with an s-wave interaction and synthetic spin-orbit coupling under a variety of conditions. We considered the system in both three and two spatial dimensions, with equal-Rashba-Dresselhaus type or Rashba-only type of spin-orbit-coupling, and with or without an artificial Zeeman field. We found competing effects on Fermionic superfluidity from spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman fields, and topologically non-trivial states in the presence of both fields. We gave an outlook on the many-body physics in the last.
We examine the topological superfluid phases for ultracold fermions in the presence of two-dimensional (2D) synthetic spin-orbit (SO) couplings which have been well realized in recent experiments. Specifically, we focus on the 2D Dirac semimetal and the SO coupled quantum anomalous Hall model, together with an attractive Hubbard interaction which can induce a superfluid phase in SO coupled systems. The superfluid phases are studied systematically based on self-consistent theories. In particular, an interesting transition between $(\ensuremath{\pi},\ensuremath{\pi})$-momentum superfluid phase and zero center-of-mass momentum superfluid phase is predicted as the strength of SO coupling is increased. The full phase diagrams of the superfluid phases are obtained, with the nontrivial topological superfluids being determined by precisely calculating the topological invariants. We also determine the optimal parameter conditions of the topological superfluid phases, which could be helpful for future real experimental studies.