We investigate strong-coupling properties of a trapped two-dimensional normal Fermi gas. Within the framework of a combined
T-matrix theory with the local density approximation, we calculate the local density of states, as well as the photoemission spectrum, to see how two-dimensional pairing fluctuations affect these single-particle quantities. In the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)--BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover region, we show that the local density of states exhibits a dip structure in the trap center, which is more remarkable than the three-dimensional case. This pseudogap phenomenon is found to naturally lead to a double-peak structure in the photoemission spectrum. The peak-to-peak energy of the spectrum at
p=0 agrees well with a recent experiment on a two-dimensional
40K Fermi gas [Feld et al., Nature 480, 75 (2011)]. Since pairing fluctuations are sensitive to the dimensionality of a system, our results would be useful for the study of many-body physics in the BCS-BEC crossover regime of a two-dimensional Fermi gas.
Pauli's exclusion principle forces fermions to occupy distinct quantum states, creating a filled region of momentum space at low temperature, the Fermi sea, whose topology governs the system's response to perturbations and the nature of its correlation functions. Recent theory predicts that for non-interacting fermions, the Euler characteristic of a
D-dimensional Fermi sea -- the topological invariant that describes its shape -- is encoded in its (
D+1)-point density correlations. Here we experimentally demonstrate this connection in a two-dimensional degenerate gas of neutral
6Li atoms using single-atom-resolved imaging. By measuring three- and four-point connected density correlations in real space, we directly extract topological invariants of the underlying Fermi sea, including the Euler characteristic. Our results are in remarkable agreement with ideal-gas predictions, despite the presence of sizeable interactions, and establish a new pathway for probing many-body topology through correlation measurements.
In a recent paper [B. P. van Zyl et al., Phys. Rev. A 89, 022503 (2014)], the average density approximation (ADA) was implemented to develop a parameter-free, nonlocal kinetic energy functional to be used in the orbital-free density functional theory of an inhomogeneous, two-dimensional (2D) Fermi gas. In this work, we provide a detailed comparison of self-consistent calculations within the ADA with the exact results of the Kohn-Sham density functional theory and the elementary Thomas-Fermi (TF) approximation. We demonstrate that the ADA for the 2D kinetic energy functional works very well under a wide variety of confinement potentials, even for relatively small particle numbers. Remarkably, the TF approximation for the kinetic energy functional, without any gradient corrections, also yields good agreement with the exact kinetic energy for all confining potentials considered, although at the expense of the spatial and kinetic energy densities exhibiting poor pointwise agreement, particularly near the TF radius. Our findings illustrate that the ADA kinetic energy functional yields accurate results for both the local and global equilibrium properties of an inhomogeneous 2D Fermi gas, without the need for any fitting parameters.