We report a fully analytical description of zero-temperature itinerant ferromagnetism in repulsive SU(N) Fermi gases with arbitrary mass imbalance among components. Using perturbation theory in the gas parameter x = kFa0, with kF the Fermi momentum and a0 the s-wave scattering length, we derive the second-order energy for arbitrary spin polarization and arbitrary mass ratio. Our main result is a closed analytic expression for the beyond-mean-field correction in mixtures with unequal masses. This analytical result extends the theory of dilute Fermi gases beyond the mass-balanced case and provides a compact equation of state for multicomponent mixtures. We show that mass imbalance breaks the paramagnetic symmetry already in the non-interacting limit, favors the occu pation of heavier components, and lowers the interaction strength required to reach a fully polarized state. For S = 1/2, the system evolves continuously from a mass-induced partially polarized state to full ferromagnetism. For larger spins, distinct mass distributions generate qualitatively differ ent polarization paths, including smooth and discontinuous sequences. Our results identify mass imbalance as a powerful control tool for magnetic ordering in ultracold Fermi mixtures.
We report a fully analytical description of zero-temperature itinerant ferromagnetism in repulsive SU(N) Fermi gases with arbitrary mass imbalance among components. Using perturbation theory in the gas parameter x = kFa0, with kF the Fermi momentum and a0 the s-wave scattering length, we derive the second-order energy for arbitrary spin polarization and arbitrary mass ratio. Our main result is a closed analytic expression for the beyond-mean-field correction in mixtures with unequal masses. This analytical result extends the theory of dilute Fermi gases beyond the mass-balanced case and provides a compact equation of state for multicomponent mixtures. We show that mass imbalance breaks the paramagnetic symmetry already in the non-interacting limit, favors the occu pation of heavier components, and lowers the interaction strength required to reach a fully polarized state. For S = 1/2, the system evolves continuously from a mass-induced partially polarized state to full ferromagnetism. For larger spins, distinct mass distributions generate qualitatively differ ent polarization paths, including smooth and discontinuous sequences. Our results identify mass imbalance as a powerful control tool for magnetic ordering in ultracold Fermi mixtures.
Itinerant ferromagnetism in dilute Fermi gases is predicted to emerge at values of the gas parameter where second-order perturbation theory is not accurate enough to properly describe the system. We have revisited perturbation theory for SU(N) fermions and derived its generalization up to third order both in terms of the gas parameter and the polarization. Our results agree satisfactorily with quantum Monte Carlo results for hard-sphere and soft-sphere potentials for S = 1/2 S = 1 / 2 . Although the nature of the phase transition depends on the interaction potential, we find that for a hard-sphere potential a phase transition is guaranteed to occur. While for S= 1/2 S = 1 / 2 we observe a quasi-continuous transition, for spins 3/2 3 / 2 and 5/2 5 / 2 , a first-order phase transition is found. For larger spins, a double transition (combination of continuous and discontinuous) occurs. The critical density reduces drastically when the spin increases, making the phase transition more accessible to experiments with ultracold dilute Fermi gases. Estimations for Fermi gases of Yb and Sr with spin 5/2 5 / 2 and 9/2 9 / 2 , respectively, are reported.
We present exact analytic results for the energy of a SU(N) repulsive Fermi gas as a function of the spin-channel occupation at second order in the gas parameter. This is an extension of previous results that now incorporates the degree of polarization of the system. Therefore, the magnetic properties of the gas can be obtained, free from numerical uncertainties. For spin 1/2 we find that second-order corrections change the itinerant ferromagnetic transition from continuous to first-order. Instead, for spin larger than 1/2 the phase transition is always of first-order type. The transition critical density reduces when the spin increases, making the phase transition more accessible to experiments with ultracold dilute Fermi gases. Estimations for Fermi gases of Yb and Sr with spin 5/2 and 9/2, respectively, are reported.
We consider imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mix-tures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species both occupying only a single hyperfine state. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be differ-ent, which leads to a spin imbalance, or spin polarization. Two different atomic species also lead to a mass imbalance. Imbalanced Fermi gases are relevant to condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics. They have been studied intensively in recent years, following their experimental realization in ultracold atomic Fermi gases. The experimental control in such a system allows for a systematic study of the equation of state and the phase diagram as a function of temperature, spin polarization and interaction strength. In this re-view, we discuss the progress in understanding strongly-interacting imbalanced Fermi gases, where a main goal is to describe the results of the highly controlled experiments. We start by discussing Feshbach resonances, after which we treat the imbalanced Fermi gas in mean-field theory to give an introduction to the relevant physics. We encounter several unusual superfluid phases, including phase-separation, gapless Sarma superfluidity, and supersolidity. To obtain a more quantitative description of the experiments, we review also more sophisti-cated techniques, such as diagrammatic methods and the renormalization-group theory. We end the review by discussing two theoretical approaches to treat the inhomogeneous imbalanced Fermi gas, namely the Landau-Ginzburg theory and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach. Key words:
We consider ultracold imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mixtures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be different, leading to a spin imbalance or a polarization. In the second case, the two different species also give rise to a mass imbalance for the particles. Imbalanced Fermi mixtures play a fundamental role in condensed-matter, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Experimentally, the atomic mixtures are made strongly interacting with the use of two-channel Feshbach resonances. We start out by treating these in more detail. We review the relevant scattering theory, and apply it to the well-studied case of resonant s-wave collisions with zero angular momentum. Furthermore, we discuss the less-studied case of p-wave collisions with nonzero angular momentum, and the inhomogeneous case due to a trapping potential. Having discussed the two-body physics, we turn to the many-body physics. The pioneering experimental studies of Cooper pairing in lithium-6 mixtures with a spin imbalance were performed by Zwierlein et al. [Science 311, 492 (2006)] and Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. We study the mean-field theory for the polarized Fermi mixture to obtain a qualitative understanding of these experiments. In the unitarity limit, where the scattering length of the interatomic interaction diverges, the theory gives rise to two exotic superfluid phases that are absent in the balanced mixture. These are the gapless superfluid Sarma phase and the phase-separated phase. By using renormalization group techniques to account for the effects of strong interactions, we obtain also quantitative agreement with Monte-Carlo calculations and experiments. We then generalize our knowledge of the solely spin-imbalanced mixture to the mass-imbalanced case, where in particular the mixture consisting of lithium-6 and potassium-40 is experimentally promising. We study the mean-field phase diagram for this mixture in the unitarity limit, where we not only find phase separation and Sarma superfluidity, but also a Lifshitz point. The latter signals an instability towards a supersolid phase. We also include the effects of fluctuations, which do not alter the topology of the phase diagram. However, fluctuation effects lower the critical temperatures with an experimentally relevant factor of three. Finally, we study superfluidity in a fully polarized gas of potassium-40 atoms near a p-wave Feshbach resonance. In particular, we consider coherent Josephson oscillations between the superfluid components in the two channels of the resonance, whose frequencies contain a clear signature of the quantum phase transition that occurs as a function of applied magnetic field.
Abstract At temperatures well below the Fermi temperature T F , the coupling of magnetic fluctuations to particle-hole excitations in a two-component Fermi gas leads to non-analytic corrections in the renormalized free energy and makes the transition to itinerant ferromagnetism first order. On the other hand, despite that larger symmetry often introduces larger degeneracies in the low-lying states, here we show that for a Fermi gas with SU(N > 2)-symmetry in three space dimensions the ferromagnetic phase transition is first order in agreement with the predictions of Landau’s mean-field theory in its minimal formulation, which contains a cubic term in the free-energy (Cazalilla et al 2009 New J. Phys. 11 103033). By performing unrestricted Hartree–Fock calculations for an SU(N > 2)-symmetric Fermi gas with short range interactions, we find the order parameter undergoes a finite jump across the transition. In addition, for SU(N > 2) we do not observe any tri-critical point up to temperatures T ≃ 0.5 T F , for which the thermal smearing of the Fermi surface and thermal fluctuations are substantial. Going beyond mean-field theory, we find that the coupling of magnetic fluctuations to particle-hole excitations makes the transition more abrupt and further enhances the tendency of the gas to become fully polarized for smaller values of N and the gas parameter k F a s . In our study, we also clarify the role of time reversal symmetry in the microscopic Hamiltonian and obtain the temperature dependence of Tan’s contact. For the latter, the presence of the tri-critical point for N = 2 leads to a more pronounced temperature dependence around the transition than for SU(N > 2)-symmetric gases. Although the results are obtained for a microscopic model relevant to ultracold atomic gases, they may also apply to models of solid state systems with SU(N > 2) symmetry provided Coulomb interactions are sufficiently well screened.
We analyze when a repulsively interacting two-component Fermi gas becomes thermodynamically unstable against phase separation. We focus on the strongly polarized limit, where the free energy of the homogeneous mixture can be calculated accurately in terms of well-defined quasiparticles, the repulsive polarons. Phase diagrams as a function of polarization, temperature, mass imbalance, and repulsive polaron energy, as well as scattering length and range parameter, are provided. We show that the lifetime of the repulsive polaron increases significantly with the interaction range and the mass of the minority atoms, raising the prospects of detecting the transition to the elusive itinerant ferromagnetic state with ultracold atoms.