To study the behavior of atomic Fermi gases in the vicinity of Feshbach resonance, M. Holland et al. [12] and S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans et al. [22] proposed resonance mean field theory in which the molecules formed by Feshbach resonance are considered in the many-body Hamiltonian. Motivated by microscopic scattering theory and resonance mean field theory, we develop a thermodynamic method to study this system. In this method we treat atomic Fermi gases near resoance as a atom-molecule mixture. We can use BCS Hamiltonian and Bose- Einstein statistics to describe the behavior of atoms and molecules respectively. Chemical equilibrium can be achieved between atoms and molecules due to hypefine interaction. We use this method to study the system behavior under different temperature and detuning energy and find that at low temperature a smooth BCS-BEC crossever can occure with decreasing detuning energy. We further calculate a measurable quantity, molecular condensation fraction, and find its behavior matches qualitatively with the experimental result [16].
To study the behavior of atomic Fermi gases in the vicinity of Feshbach resonance, M. Holland et al. [12] and S. J. J. M. F. Kokkelmans et al. [22] proposed resonance mean field theory in which the molecules formed by Feshbach resonance are considered in the many-body Hamiltonian. Motivated by microscopic scattering theory and resonance mean field theory, we develop a thermodynamic method to study this system. In this method we treat atomic Fermi gases near resoance as a atom-molecule mixture. We can use BCS Hamiltonian and Bose- Einstein statistics to describe the behavior of atoms and molecules respectively. Chemical equilibrium can be achieved between atoms and molecules due to hypefine interaction. We use this method to study the system behavior under different temperature and detuning energy and find that at low temperature a smooth BCS-BEC crossever can occure with decreasing detuning energy. We further calculate a measurable quantity, molecular condensation fraction, and find its behavior matches qualitatively with the experimental result [16].
A Feshbach resonance in the s-wave scattering length occurs if the energy of the two atoms in the incoming open channel is close to the energy of a bound state in a coupled closed channel. Starting from the microscopic Hamiltonian that describes this situation, we derive the effective atom–molecule theory for a Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance. In order to take into account all two-body processes, we have to dress the bare couplings of the atom–molecule model with ladder diagrams. This results in a quantum field theory that exactly reproduces the scattering amplitude of the atoms and the bound-state energy of the molecules. Since these properties are incorporated at the quantum level, the theory can be applied both above and below the critical temperature of the gas. Moreover, making use of the true interatomic potentials ensures that no divergences are encountered at any stage of the calculation. We also present the mean-field theory for the Bose–Einstein condensed phase of the gas.
PACS. 03.75.Hh – Static properties of condensates; thermodynamical, statistical and structural properties. PACS. 03.75.Ss – Degenerate Fermi gases. PACS. 05.30.Fk – Fermion systems and electron gas. Abstract. – We present a theory for a superfluid Fermi gas near the BCS-BEC crossover, including pairing fluctuation contributions to the free energy similar to that considered by Nozières and Schmitt-Rink for the normal phase. In the strong coupling limit, our theory is able to recover the Bogoliubov theory of a weakly interacting Bose gas with a molecular scattering length very close to the known exact result. We compare our results with recent Quantum Monte Carlo simulations both for the ground state and at finite temperature. Excellent agreement is found for all interaction strengths where simulation results are available. The recent experimental realization of strongly interacting Fermi gases of 6 Li and 40 K atoms near a Feshbach resonance has opened up the exciting possibility of investigating the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) [1–5]. In these systems, the inter-atomic interaction strength can be varied by tuning
A self-consistent theory is derived to describe the BCS--Bose-Einstein-condensate crossover for a strongly interacting Fermi gas with a Feshbach resonance. In the theory the fluctuation of the dressed molecules, consisting of both preformed Cooper pairs and ``bare'' Feshbach molecules, has been included within a self-consistent T-matrix approximation, beyond the Nozi\`eres and Schmitt-Rink strategy considered by Ohashi and Griffin. The resulting self-consistent equations are solved numerically to investigate the normal-state properties of the crossover at various resonance widths. It is found that the superfluid transition temperature Tc increases monotonically at all widths as the effective interaction between atoms becomes more attractive. Furthermore, a residue factor Zm of the molecule's Green function and a complex effective mass have been determined to characterize the fraction and lifetime of Feshbach molecules at Tc. Our many-body calculations of Zm agree qualitatively well with recent measurments of the gas of 6Li atoms near the broad resonance at 834G. The crossover from narrow to broad resonances has also been studied.
The physics of quantum degenerate atomic Fermi gases in uniform as well as in harmonically trapped configurations is reviewed from a theoretical perspective. Emphasis is given to the effect of interactions that play a crucial role, bringing the gas into a superfluid phase at low temperature. In these dilute systems, interactions are characterized by a single parameter, the s-wave scattering length, whose value can be tuned using an external magnetic field near a broad Feshbach resonance. The BCS limit of ordinary Fermi superfluidity, the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dimers, and the unitary limit of large scattering length are important regimes exhibited by interacting Fermi gases. In particular, the BEC and the unitary regimes are characterized by a high value of the superfluid critical temperature, on the order of the Fermi temperature. Different physical properties are discussed, including the density profiles and the energy of the ground-state configurations, the momentum distribution, the fraction of condensed pairs, collective oscillations and pair-breaking effects, the expansion of the gas, the main thermodynamic properties, the behavior in the presence of optical lattices, and the signatures of superfluidity, such as the existence of quantized vortices, the quenching of the moment of inertia, and the consequences of spin polarization. Various theoretical approaches are considered, ranging from the mean-field description of the BCS-BEC crossover to nonperturbative methods based on quantum Monte Carlo techniques. A major goal of the review is to compare theoretical predictions with available experimental results.
We investigate the Bose-Einstein condensation of fermionic pairs in a uniform two-component Fermi gas, obtaining an explicit formula for the condensate density as a function of the chemical potential and the energy gap. We analyze the condensate fraction in the crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state of weakly interacting Cooper pairs to the Bose-Einstein condensate of molecular dimers. By using the local-density approximation we study confined Fermi vapors of alkali-metal atoms for which there is experimental evidence of condensation also on the BCS side of the Feshbach resonance. Our theoretical results are in agreement with these experimental data and give the behavior of the condensate on both sides of the Feshbach resonance at zero temperature.
We derive a resonance field-theory for ultra-cold Bose or Fermi gases that is valid when scattering resonances are present. Experiments with a ^85Rb condensate have shown new interesting physics close to resonance(N.R. Claussen, E.A. Donley, S.T. Thompson, C.E. Wieman, e-print cond-mat/0201400.). It is also expected that utilizing a Feshbach resonance can greatly enhance the critical temperature for superfluidity in a Fermi gas(M. Holland, S.J.J.M.F. Kokkelmans, M.L. Chiofalo, and R. Walser, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87), 120406 (2001).. Therefore it is important to treat the rich scattering physics properly inside a many-body theory. We show that the scattering length only is insufficient to describe a system close to resonance. Our many-body equations have build-in the two-body scattering equations, and we include the full scattering solution over the relevant energy range by means of a renormalized resonance scattering theory(S.J.J.M.F. Kokkelmans, J.N. Milstein, M.L. Chiofalo, R. Walser, and M.J. Holland, e-print cond-mat/0112283.).