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arXiv:1711.05706 · Physical Review A

Thermal transitions, pseudogap behavior, and BCS-BEC crossover in Fermi-Fermi mixtures

Madhuparna Karmakar

Published Mar 23, 2018• 8 citations
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Abstract

We study the mass imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixture within the framework of a two-dimensional lattice fermion model. Based on the thermodynamic and species-dependent quasiparticle behavior, we map out the finite-temperature phase diagram of this system and show that unlike the balanced Fermi superfluid, there are now two different pseudogap regimes as PG-I and PG-II. While within the PG-I regime both the fermionic species are pseudogapped, PG-II corresponds to the regime where pseudogap feature survives only in the light species. We believe that the single-particle spectral features that we discuss in this paper are observable through the species-resolved radio-frequency spectroscopy and momentum-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements on systems such as ${6}_{\text{Li}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{40}_{\text{K}}$ mixture. We further investigate the interplay between the population and mass imbalances and report that at a fixed population imbalance, the BCS-BEC crossover in a Fermi-Fermi mixture would require a critical interaction (${U}_{c}$) for the realization of the uniform superfluid state. The effect of imbalance in mass on the exotic Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluid phase has been probed in detail in terms of the thermodynamic and quasiparticle behavior of this phase. It has been observed that in spite of the $s$-wave symmetry of the pairing field, a nodal superfluid gap is realized in the Larkin-Ovchinnikov regime. Our results on the various thermal scales and regimes are expected to serve as benchmarks for the experimental observations on ${6}_{\text{Li}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{40}_{\text{K}}$ mixture.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.033617

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Abstract Ultracold two-component Fermi gases with a tunable population imbalance have provided an excellent opportunity for studying the exotic Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states, which have been of great interest in condensed matter physics. However, the FFLO states have not been observed experimentally in Fermi gases in three dimensions (3D), possibly due to their small phase space volume and extremely low temperature required for an equal-mass Fermi gas. Here we explore possible effects of mass imbalance, mainly in a 6Li–40K mixture, on the one-plane-wave FFLO phases for a 3D homogeneous case at the mean-field level. We present various phase diagrams related to the FFLO states at both zero and finite temperatures, throughout the BCS-BEC crossover, and show that a large mass ratio may enhance substantially FFLO type of pairing.
We investigate the temperature effects in an imbalanced superfluid atomic Fermi gas. We consider a bilayer system of two-component dipolar fermionic atoms with one layer containing atoms of one component and the other layer the atoms of other component with an imbalance between the populations of the two components. This imbalance results in uniform and nonuniform superfluid phases such as phase-separated BCS, Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO), Sarma and normal Fermi liquid phases for different system parameters. Using the mean-field BCS theory together with the superfluid mass-density criterion we classify different phases in thermodynamic phase diagram. Our results indicate that for a dipolar Fermi system the Sarma phase is stable for large imbalance at finite temperature below the critical temperature, and the FFLO phase is stable for intermediate imbalance on the BCS side of a BCS-BCE crossover. The phase diagram in the temperature and population imbalance plane indicate three Lifshitz points: one corresponding to coexistance of BCS, FFLO and normal Fermi liquid phase while the other two correspond to the coexistance of the Sarma phase, FFLO phase and normal Fermi phase for dipolar interactions.
In this paper we present a very general theoretical framework for addressing fermionic superfluids over the entire range of BCS to Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover in the presence of population imbalance or spin polarization. Our emphasis is on providing a theory which reduces to the standard zero temperature mean-field theories in the literature, but necessarily includes pairing fluctuation effects at nonzero temperature within a consistent framework. Physically, these effects are associated with the presence of preformed pairs (or a fermionic pseudogap) in the normal phase, and pair excitations of the condensate, in the superfluid phase. We show how this finite TTT theory of fermionic pair condensates bears many similarities to the condensation of point bosons. In the process we examine three different types of condensate: the usual breached pair or Sarma phase and both the one- and two-plane-wave Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) states. The last of these has been discussed in the literature albeit only within a Landau-Ginzburg formalism, generally valid near Tc{T}_{c}Tc​. Here we show how to arrive at the two-plane-wave LOFF state in the ground state as well as at general temperature TTT.