We address the finite temperature phase diagram of ultracold fermionic atoms across a Feshbach resonance based on a functional integral for an atom-molecule model. This allows to fully exploit the presence of the global symmetry of phase rotations, U(1). Both the equation of state and the classification of the thermodynamic phases are obtained from a symmetry consideration. We focus on the universal aspects associated to narrow and broad resonances, in turn connected by an additional form of crossover. The narrow resonance limit can be solved exactly above the critical temperature. We also assess deviations from the broad resonance universality which have recently been probed experimentally.
We describe the gas of ultracold fermionic atoms by a functional integral for atom and molecule fields. The crossover from Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) to BCS-type superfluidity shows universal features in terms of a concentration parameter for the ratio between scattering length and average interatomic distance. We discuss the relevance of the Yukawa coupling between atoms and molecules, establish an exact narrow resonance limit, and show that renormalized quantities are independent of the Yukawa coupling for the broad resonance and BCS and BEC limits. Within our functional integral formalism we compute the atom scattering in vacuum and the molecular binding energy. This connects the universal concentration parameter to the magnetic field of a given experiment. Beyond mean-field theory we include the fluctuations of the molecule field and the renormalization effects for the atom-molecule coupling. We find excellent agreement with the observed fraction of bare molecules in
6Li and qualitative agreement with the condensate fraction in
6Li and
40K. In addition to the phase diagram and condensate fraction we compute the correlation length for molecules, the in-medium scattering length for molecules and atoms, and the sound velocity.
We theoretically study the thermodynamic properties of a strongly interacting Fermi gas at the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), by applying a recently outlined strong-coupling theory that includes pair fluctuations beyond the commonly-used many-body
T -matrix or ladder approximation at the Gaussian level. The beyond Gaussian pair fluctuation (GPF) theory always respects the exact thermodynamic relations and recovers the Bogoliubov theory of molecules in the BEC limit with a nearly correct molecule-molecule scattering length. We show that the beyond-GPF theory predicts quantitatively accurate ground-state properties at the BEC-BCS crossover, in good agreement with the recent measurement by Horikoshi et al. in Phys. Rev. X 7, 041004 (2017). In the unitary limit with infinitely large
s -wave scattering length, the beyond-GPF theory predicts a reliable universal energy equation of state up to 0.6
Tc , where
Tc is the superfluid transition temperature at unitarity. The theory predicts a Bertsch parameter
ξ≃0.365 at zero temperature, in good agreement with the latest quantum Monte Carlo result
ξ=0.367(7) and the latest experimental measurement
ξ=0.367(9) . We attribute the excellent and wide applicability of the beyond-GPF theory in the broken-symmetry phase at sufficiently low temperatures to the empirically useful partial re-summation of Feynman diagrams following a dimensional
ϵ -expansion analysis near four dimensions (
d=4−ϵ ), which gives rise to accurate predictions at the second order
O(ϵ2) . Our work indicates the possibility of further improving the strong-coupling theory of strongly interacting fermions based on the systematic inclusion of large-loop Feynman diagrams at higher orders
O(ϵn) with
n≥3 .
This thesis summarizes our study on the properties of ultracold Fermions near a Feshbach resonance. The Feshbach resonance allows for a continuous tuning of the interaction strength between the atoms. With this tunability, many properties predicted for the BCS-BEC crossover region in solids can be shown to exist in this ultracold Fermi gas. With the highly controllable parameters and the clean environment in the experiments, the study of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) crossover in ultracold Fermions provides valuable insights to the strongly interacting crossover region, which has never been achieved before in solids. We first examine the properties of 6 Li and 40 K gases. We find that in the unitary region the properties of the system do not depend on the atom species: outside the unitary region, the properties of the system do depend on the scattering properties of the different atom species. We study the dynamics of the ultracold Fermions in the crossover region in response to the variations in the external magnetic field. We find that the response depends on the time scale and the amplitude of the variations; which is in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations. We derive a set of dynamic mean-field equations for a Fermi gas in an arbitrary potential trap near a wide Feshbach resonance. The equations are more general than the local density approximation (LDA), and less demanding computationally as the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes (BdG) equation. We then analyze the solubility of the equations, as well as solve a simplified version of the equations for illustration and for self-consistency check on the assumptions made during the derivation. We systematically study the possible phases for a trapped Fermi gas with population imbalance near a Feshbach resonance. Our results agree qualitatively well with the recent experimental results, and predict the existence of two exotic non-BCS superfluid phases for the strongly interacting gas with population unbalance: the Breached Pair (BP) phase and the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase. Finally, to guide the experimental efforts in the search of new quantum phases, we propose a detection scheme for the possible exotic phases.
Bragg spectroscopy shows the evolution of gapless Goldstone modes and single-particle-like excitations in an atomic Fermi superfluid as it crosses from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid to the Bose–Einstein condensate regime. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a central paradigm of elementary particle physics1, magnetism2, superfluidity3 and superconductivity4. According to Goldstone’s theorem, phase transitions that break continuous symmetries lead to the existence of gapless excitations in the long-wavelength limit5. These Goldstone modes can become the dominant low-energy excitation, showing that symmetry breaking has a profound impact on the physical properties of matter. Here, we present a comprehensive study of the elementary excitations in a homogeneous strongly interacting Fermi gas through the crossover from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules using two-photon Bragg spectroscopy. The spectra exhibit a discrete Goldstone mode, associated with the broken-symmetry superfluid phase, as well as pair-breaking single-particle excitations. Our techniques yield a direct determination of the superfluid pairing gap and speed of sound in close agreement with strong-coupling theories.