Dynamical Mean-Field Equations for Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas in a Trap

S. L. Hemmer, Kenneth M. O’Hara, Michael E. Gehm +1 more

Yeong E. Kim, Alexander L. Zubarev

Hong-Ping Xu, Zhen-Zhen He, Zi-Fa Yu +1 more

In this paper, we study the interaction-modulated tunneling dynamics of a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture, where a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with weak repulsive interaction is confined in a symmetric deep double-well potential and an equally populated two-component Fermi gas in a harmonic potential symmetrically is positioned in the center of the double-well potential. The tunneling between the two wells is modulated by fermions trapped in a harmonic potential. When the temperature is adequately low and the bosonic particle number is adequately large, we can employ the mean-field theory to describe the evolution of the BEC in the double-well potential through the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For the Fermi gas in the harmonic potential trap, we consider the case where the inter-fermion interaction is tuned on the deep Bose-Einstein condensate of the inter-fermion Feshbach resonance, where two fermions of spin-up and spin-down form a two-body bound state. Within the regime, the Fermi gas is well described by a condensate of these fermionic dimers, and hence can be simulated as well by a Gross-Pitaevskii equation of dimers. The inter-species interactions couple the dynamics of the two species, which results in interesting features in the tunneling oscillations. The dynamic equations of the BEC in the double-well potential is described by a two-mode approximation. Coupling it with time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation of the harmonically potential trapped molecular BEC, we numerically investigate the dynamical evolution of the Boson-Fermi hybrid system under different initial conditions. It is found that the interaction among fermions in a harmonic potential leads to strong non-linearity in the oscillations of the bosons in the double-well potential and enriches the tunneling dynamics of the bosons. Especially, it strengthens macroscopic quantum self-trapping. And the macroscopic quantum self-trapping can be expressed in three forms: the phase tends to be negative and monotonically decreases with time, the phase evolves with time, and the phase tends to be positive and increases monotonically with time. This means that it is possible the tunneling dynamics of the BEC in double-well potential is adjustable. Our results can be verified experimentally in a Bose-Fermi superfluid mixture by varying different interaction parameters via Feshbach resonance and confinement-induced resonance.

W. Y. Zhang, Liqin Zhou, Y. L.

We generalize the quantum hydrodynamical equations and study the dynamics of a strongly interacting Fermi gas trapped in an anisotropic harmonic trap. By using this simple theory to simulate the expansion of the Fermi gas observed experimentally by O'Hara et al ., Science , 298 (2002) 2179, we find that the density profiles of the system are well described by the Fetter-like form in the dynamical process in all spatial directions. We also discuss the anisotropic dependence on the expansion.

Pablo Díaz, D. Laroze, Ivan A. Schmidt +1 more

We study collective behaviour of Fermi gases trapped in various external potentials, including optical lattices (OLs), in the framework of the mean-field (hydrodynamic) description. Using the variational method, we derive effective dynamical equations for the one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) settings from the general 3D mean-field equation. The respective confinement is provided by trapping potentials with the cylindrical and planar symmetries, respectively. The resulting equations are nonpolynomial Schrödinger equations coupled to equations for the local transverse size of the trapped states. Numerical simulations demonstrate close agreement of results produced by the underlying 3D equation and the effective low-dimensional ones. We consider the ground state in these settings. In particular, analytical solutions are obtained for the effectively 2D non-interacting Fermi gas. Differences between the 1D and 2D configurations are highlighted. Finally, we analyse the dependence of the 1D and 2D density patterns of the trapped gas, in the presence of the OL, on the strengths of the confining and OL potentials, and on the scattering length which determines the strength of interactions between non-identical fermions.

Joseph M. Kinast