Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov oscillations in harmonically trapped optical lattices
M. Iskin, Carl J. Williams
Abstract
The attractive Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonian is solved via the Bogoliubov-de Gennes formalism to analyze the ground state phases of population imbalanced two-component fermion mixtures in harmonically trapped optical lattices. In the low density limit, the superfluid order parameter has Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) type oscillations in the radial direction towards the trap edges to accommodate the unpaired fermions that are pushed away from the trap center with a single peak in their density. However, in the high density limit, while the order parameter has oscillations in the radial direction towards the trap center for low imbalances, it also has oscillations towards the trap edges with increasing imbalance until the superfluid to normal phase transition occurs beyond a critical imbalance. This leads to a single peak in the density of unpaired fermions for low and high imbalances, but leads to double peaks for intermediate imbalances.