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arXiv:1312.0505 · Physical Review A

Critical temperature and superfluid gap of the unitary Fermi gas from functional renormalization

Igor Boettcher, Jan Martin Pawlowski, CHRISTOF WETTERICH

Published May 30, 2014• 30 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the superfluid transition of the unitary Fermi gas by means of the functional renormalization group, aiming at quantitative precision. We extract ${T}_{\mathrm{c}}/\ensuremath{\mu}=0.38(2)$ and $\ensuremath{\Delta}/\ensuremath{\mu}=1.04(15)$ for the critical temperature and the superfluid gap at zero temperature, respectively, within a systematic improvement of the truncation for the effective average action. The key ingredient in comparison to previous approaches consists in the use of regulators which cut off both frequencies and momenta. We incorporate renormalization effects on both the bosonic and the fermionic propagators, include higher-order bosonic scattering processes, and investigate the regulator and specification parameter dependence for an error estimate. The ratio $\ensuremath{\Delta}/{T}_{\mathrm{c}}=2.7(3)$ becomes less sensitive to the relative cutoff scale of bosons and fermions when improving the truncation. The techniques developed in this work are easily carried over to the cases of finite scattering length, lower dimensionality, and spin imbalance.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.89.053630

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We investigate the superfluid phase transition in an SU(N)\mathrm{SU}(N)SU(N)-symmetric Fermi gas with NNN distinct spin states using the functional renormalization group. To capture pairing phenomena beyond mean-field theory, we introduce an auxiliary bosonic field and employ the leading order of the derivative expansion of the partially bosonized effective average action. By discretizing the effective potential on a grid and numerically integrating the flow equations, we resolve the thermodynamic behavior near the transition. Our results reveal a fluctuation-induced first-order phase transition for N≥4N \geq 4N≥4, which is absent at the mean-field level. In the unitary regime, we provide quantitative predictions for the critical temperature, as well as for the discontinuities in the superfluid gap and entropy density as functions of NNN. With increasing NNN, the critical temperature decreases, while the discontinuities become more pronounced, indicating a stronger first-order transition.
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The physics of interacting Fermi systems is extremely sensitive to the energy scale. Of particular interest is the low energy regime where correlation induced collective behavior emerges. The theory of interacting Fermi systems is confronted with the occurrence of very different phenomena along a continuum of scales calling for methods capable of computing physical observables as a function of energy scale. In this thesis, we perform a comprehensive renormalization group analysis of two and three-dimensional Fermi systems at low and zero temperature. We examine systems with spontaneous symmetry-breaking and quantum critical behavior by deriving and solving flow equations within the functional renormalization group framework. We extend the Hertz-Millis theory of quantumphase transitions in itinerant fermion systems to phases with discrete and continuous symmetry-breaking, and to quantum critical points where the zero temperature theory is associated with a non-Gaussian fixed point. The order parameter is implemented by a bosonic Hubbard-Stratonovich field, which - for continuous symmetry-breaking - splits into two components corresponding to longitudinal and transversal Goldstone fluctuations. We compute the finite temperature phase boundary near the quantum critical point explicitly including non-Gaussian fluctuations. We then set up a coupled fermion-boson renormalization group theory that captures the mutual interplay of gapless fermions with massless order parameter fluctuations when approaching a quantum critical point. As a first application, we compute the complete set of quantum critical exponents at the semimetal-to-superfluid quantum phase transition of attractively interacting Dirac fermions in two dimensions. Both, the order parameter propagator and the fermion propagator become nonanalytic functions of momenta destroying the Fermi liquid behavior. We finally compute the effects of quantum fluctuations in the superfluid ground state of an attractively interacting Fermi system, employing the attractive Hubbard model as a prototype. The flow equations capture the influence of longitudinal and Goldstone order parameter fluctuations on non-universal quantities such as the fermionic gap and the fermion-boson vertex, as well as the exact universal infrared asymptotics present in every fermionic superfluid.
In this thesis, we perform a comprehensive renormalization group analysis of two- and three-dimensional Fermi systems at low and zero temperature. We examine systems with spontaneous symmetry-breaking and quantum critical behavior by deriving and solving flow equations within the functional renormalization group framework. We extend the Hertz-Millis theory of quantum phase transitions in itinerant fermion systems to phases with discrete and continuous symmetry-breaking, and to quantum critical points where the zero temperature theory is associated with a non-Gaussian fixed point. We compute the finite temperature phase boundary near the quantum critical point explicitly including non-Gaussian fluctuations. We then set up a coupled fermion-boson renormalization group theory that captures the mutual interplay of gapless fermions with massless order parameter fluctuations when approaching a quantum critical point. As a first application, we compute the complete set of quantum critical exponents at the semimetal-to-superfluid quantum phase transition of attractively interacting Dirac fermions in two dimensions. Both, the order parameter propagator and the fermion propagator become non-analytic functions of momenta destroying the Fermi liquid behavior. We finally compute the effects of quantum fluctuations in the superfluid ground state of an attractively interacting Fermi system, employing the attractive Hubbard model as a prototype. The flow equations capture the influence of longitudinal and Goldstone order parameter fluctuations on non-universal quantities such as the fermionic gap and the fermion-boson vertex, as well as the exact universal infrared asymptotics present in every fermionic superfluid.
We compute the equation of state, the gap as well as the density fluctuations of a two-component superfluid Fermi gas over the whole range of BEC-BCS crossover at vanishing temperature within the functional renormalisation group approach. With an improved understanding of the relation between density and chemical potential, already a rather simple truncation yields a very good quantitative agreement with experimental data and theoretical results, in particular in the unitarity limit and on the BEC side. The current approach utilises higher order density fluctuations as a fundamental building block for the computation of the density as a function of the chemical potential. This circumvents the fine-tuning problem of the density-related fundamental parameters on the microscopic level that has been observed in previous approaches. The quantitative reliability of the functional renormalisation group approach already within simple approximations opens the path towards precision results in more elaborate truncations.