In the two-component Fermi gas with contact interactions a pseudogap regime, in which pairing correlations are present without superfluidity, can exist at temperatures between the superfluid critical temperature
Tc and a temperature
T∗>Tc. However, the existence of a pseudogap in the unitary limit of infinite scattering length is debated. To help address this issue, we have used finite-temperature auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFMC) methods to study the thermodynamics of the spin-balanced homogeneous unitary Fermi gas on a lattice. We present results for the thermal energy, heat capacity, condensate fraction, a model-independent pairing gap, and spin susceptibility, and compare them to experimental data when available. Our model space consists of the complete first Brillouin zone of the lattice, and our calculations are performed in the canonical ensemble of fixed particle number. We find that the energy-staggering pairing gap vanishes above
Tc and that
T∗ at unitarity, as determined from the spin susceptibility, is lower than previously reported in AFMC simulations.
We compare the theoretical predictions for universal thermodynamics of a homogeneous, strongly correlated Fermi gas with the latest experimental measurements reported by the ENS group [S. Nascimb\`ene et al., Nature (London) 463, 1057 (2010)] and the Tokyo group [M. Horikoshi et al., Science 327, 442 (2010)]. The theoretical results are obtained using two diagrammatic theories, together with a virial expansion theory combined with a P\'ade approximation. We find good agreement between theory and experiment. In particular, the virial expansion, using a P\'ade approximation up to third order, describes the experimental results extremely well down to the superfluid transition temperature,
Tc 0.16TF, where
TF is the Fermi temperature. The comparison in this work complements our previous comparative study on the universal thermodynamics of a strongly correlated but trapped Fermi gas. The comparison also raises interesting issues about the unitary entropy and the applicability of the P\'ade approximation.
We measure radio frequency (rf) spectra of the homogeneous unitary Fermi gas at temperatures ranging from the Boltzmann regime through quantum degeneracy and across the superfluid transition. For all temperatures, a single spectral peak is observed. Its position smoothly evolves from the bare atomic resonance in the Boltzmann regime to a frequency corresponding to nearly one Fermi energy at the lowest temperatures. At high temperatures, the peak width reflects the scattering rate of the atoms, while at low temperatures, the width is set by the size of fermion pairs. Above the superfluid transition, and approaching the quantum critical regime, the width increases linearly with temperature, indicating non-Fermi-liquid behavior. From the wings of the rf spectra, we obtain the contact, quantifying the strength of short-range pair correlations. We find that the contact rapidly increases as the gas is cooled below the superfluid transition.