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Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov Superfluids with $P$-wave Symmetry in Spinless Fermionic Optical Lattices

Zhen-Fei Zheng, Zhen Zheng, Xu‐Bo Zou, Guang‐Can Guo

Published May 9, 2017• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state, whose Cooper pairing hosts a non-zero center-of-mass momentum, is predicted and well studied in spin-singlet superfluids in past decades. Different from previous works that engineer FFLO superfluids in spinful cold atoms, we show that the FFLO superfluids, with $p$-wave symmetry, can emerge in a spinless environment associated with nearest-neighbor-site interactions. The novel mechanism of the FFLO superfluids lies on the split Fermi surfaces at low filling factor, which naturally gives rise to Cooper pairings with finite momentum. The phase transition is accompanied by changed Chern numbers, in which, different from the conventional picture, the band gap does not close. The exotic topological transition can be explained by the spontaneously-broken translational invariance of order parameters. Finally, we investigate the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature of the FFLO state, and show its possibility to be observed at finite temperature.

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Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov Superfluids with PPP-wave Symmetry in Spinless Fermionic Optical Lattices
The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state, whose Cooper pairing hosts a non-zero center-of-mass momentum, is predicted and well studied in spin-singlet superfluids in past decades. Different from previous works that engineer FFLO superfluids in spinful cold atoms, we show that the FFLO superfluids, with ppp-wave symmetry, can emerge in a spinless environment associated with nearest-neighbor-site interactions. The novel mechanism of the FFLO superfluids lies on the split Fermi surfaces at low filling factor, which naturally gives rise to Cooper pairings with finite momentum. The phase transition is accompanied by changed Chern numbers, in which, different from the conventional picture, the band gap does not close. The exotic topological transition can be explained by the spontaneously-broken translational invariance of order parameters. Finally, we investigate the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature of the FFLO state, and show its possibility to be observed at finite temperature.
The Fulde–Ferrell (FF) superfluid phase, in which fermions form finite momentum Cooper pairings, is well studied in spin-singlet superfluids in past decades. Different from previous works that engineer the FF state in spinful cold atoms, we show that the FF state can emerge in spinless Fermi gases confined in optical lattice associated with nearest-neighbor interactions. The mechanism of the spinless FF state relies on the split Fermi surfaces by tuning the chemistry potential, which naturally gives rise to finite momentum Cooper pairings. The phase transition is accompanied by changed Chern numbers, in which, different from the conventional picture, the band gap does not close. By beyond-mean-field calculations, we find the finite momentum pairing is more robust, yielding the system promising for maintaining the FF state at finite temperature. Finally we present the possible realization and detection scheme of the spinless FF state.
The realizations of spin-orbit coupling in cold atoms lead to a burst of research activities in the searching of topological matters in ultracold atom systems. Recent theoretical predictions show that topological Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluids can be realized with appropriate spin-orbit coupling and in-plane Zeeman fields. In this work, a comprehensive understanding of the pairing symmetry, phase diagram, and the edge modes in this topological matter are presented. The center-of-mass momentum of the Cooper pairs plays the role of renormalizing the in-plane Zeeman fields and chemical potential. The in-plane Zeeman fields also induce asymmetry to the effective ppp-wave pairing, apart from a small fraction of higher orbital components. As a result, the phase diagram is composed by different phases, which are determined by the Fermi surface topology and band gap width of the superfluids. Especially, the gapped and gapless topological FFLO phases have totally different finite size effects. These features show that the spin-orbit coupled cold atoms provide an important platform in realizing topological matters which may not be materialized with solids.
Determining the center-of-mass (COM) momentum of Cooper pairs in unconventional superconductors or superfluids is a topic of great interest in condensed matter physics and ultracold atomic gases. Theoretically, we investigate the dynamical excitations of a two-dimensional spin-polarized attractive Hubbard model on a square optical lattice under an effective Zeeman field by computing the density and spin dynamical structure factors, focusing on phase transition from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluid. In the FFLO superfluid, besides the phonon mode in the density channel, a low-energy bogolon mode emerges in the spin channel, which is associated with Bogoliubov quasiparticles on a Bogoliubov Fermi surface. Moreover, the dynamical excitations exhibit pronounced anisotropy in momentum space due to the finite COM momentum. At half filling, the roton mode around [ π , π ] evolves from a point-like minimum into a ring structure shifted by the COM momentum across the BCS-FFLO transition, providing a roton-based protocol to extract the COM momentum. These predictions provide key insights for confirming the existence of FFLO superfluids and understanding their dynamical excitation spectra.
The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase, a superconducting state with nonzero total momentum Cooper pairs in a large magnetic field, was first predicted about 50 years ago and has since become an important concept in many branches of physics. Despite an intensive search in various materials, unambiguous experimental evidence for the FFLO phase is still lacking in experiments. In this paper we show that both Fulde-Ferrell (FF) (a uniform order parameter with a plane-wave phase) and Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) phases (a spatially varying order parameter amplitude) can be observed using fermionic cold atoms in spin-orbit-coupled optical lattices. The increasing spin-orbit coupling enhances the FF phase over the LO phase. The coexistence of superfluid and magnetic orders is also found in the normal BCS phase. The pairing mechanism for different phases is understood by visualizing superfluid pairing densities in different spin-orbit bands. The possibility of observing similar physics using spin-orbit-coupled superconducting ultrathin films is also discussed.
Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluids, Cooper pairings with finite momentum, and Majorana fermions (MFs), quasiparticles with non-Abelian exchange statistics, are two topics under intensive investigation in the past several decades, but unambiguous experimental evidence for them has not been found yet. Here we show that the recent experimentally realized shaken optical lattice provides a pathway to realize FFLO superfluids and MFs. By tuning the shaking frequency and amplitude, various couplings between the sss and ppp orbitals of the lattice (called the pseudospins) can be generated. We show that the combination of the sss- and ppp-band dispersion inversion, the engineered pseudospin coupling, and the on-site attractive interaction naturally allows the observation of FFLO superfluids as well as MFs in different parameter regions.
The experimental observation of traditional Zeeman-field induced Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) superfluids has been hindered by various challenges, in particular, the requirement of low dimensional systems. In 2D, finite temperature phase fluctuations lead to an extremely small Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition temperature for FFLO superfluids, raising serious concerns regarding their experimental observability. Recently, it was shown that FFLO superfluids can be realized using a Rashba spin-orbit coupled Fermi gas subject to Zeeman fields, which may also support topological excitations such as Majorana fermions in 2D. Here we address the finite temperature BKT transition issue in this system, which may exhibit gapped, gapless, topological, and gapless topological FF phases. We find a large BKT transition temperature due to large effective superfluid densities, making it possible to observe 2D FF superfluids at finite temperature. In addition, we show that gapless FF superfluids can be stable due to their positive superfluid densities. These findings pave the way for the experimental observation of 2D gapped and gapless FF superfluids and their associated topological excitations at finite temperature.