Self-consistent theory of instabilities in the spin-1 Bose gas

J. M. McGuirk

Viktor Borisovich Bobrov, Pieter P. J. M. Schram, S. A. Trigger

W. E. Hagston, Colin John Lambert

R. Combescot, X. Leyronas, M. Yu. Kagan

We investigate within a self-consistent theory the molecular instabilities arising in the normal state of a homogeneous degenerate Fermi gas, covering the whole Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) to BCS crossover. These are the standard instability for molecular formation, the BCS instability which corresponds to the formation of Cooper pairs, and the related Bose-Einstein instability. These instabilities manifest themselves in the properties of the particle-particle vertex, which we calculate in a ladder approximation. To find the critical temperatures corresponding to these various instabilities, we handle the properties of the interacting Fermi gas on the same footing as the instabilities by making use of the same vertex. This approximate treatment is shown to be quite satisfactory in a number of limiting situations where it agrees with known exact results. The results for the BCS critical temperature and for the BE condensation are found to be in fair agreement with earlier results. The threshold for formation of molecules at rest undergoes a sizable shift toward the BEC side, due to quantum effects arising from the presence of the degenerate Fermi gas. This should make its experimental observation fairly easy. This shift remains important at least up to temperatures comparable to the Fermi energy of the gas.

Christian-Marcel Schmied, Thomas Gasenzer, Markus K. Oberthaler +1 more

Suvi Mirjami Virtanen, M.M. Salomaa

We study the stability of vortices in trapped single-component Bose–Einstein condensates within self-consistent mean-field theories; in particular, we consider the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov–Popov theory and its recently proposed gapless extensions. It is shown that for sufficiently repulsively interacting systems the anomalous negative-energy modes related to vortex instabilities are lifted to positive energies due to partial filling of the vortex core with noncondensed gas. Such behaviour implies that within these theories the vortex states are eventually stable against the transfer of condensate matter to the anomalous core modes. This self-stabilization of vortices, shown to occur under very general circumstances, is contrasted to the predictions of the non-self-consistent Bogoliubov approximation, which is known to exhibit anomalous modes for all vortex configurations and thus implying instability of these states. In addition, the shortcomings of these approximations in describing the properties of vortices are analysed, and the need for a self-consistent theory taking properly into account the coupled dynamics of the condensate and the noncondensate atoms is emphasized.