We consider imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mix-tures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species both occupying only a single hyperfine state. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be differ-ent, which leads to a spin imbalance, or spin polarization. Two different atomic species also lead to a mass imbalance. Imbalanced Fermi gases are relevant to condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics. They have been studied intensively in recent years, following their experimental realization in ultracold atomic Fermi gases. The experimental control in such a system allows for a systematic study of the equation of state and the phase diagram as a function of temperature, spin polarization and interaction strength. In this re-view, we discuss the progress in understanding strongly-interacting imbalanced Fermi gases, where a main goal is to describe the results of the highly controlled experiments. We start by discussing Feshbach resonances, after which we treat the imbalanced Fermi gas in mean-field theory to give an introduction to the relevant physics. We encounter several unusual superfluid phases, including phase-separation, gapless Sarma superfluidity, and supersolidity. To obtain a more quantitative description of the experiments, we review also more sophisti-cated techniques, such as diagrammatic methods and the renormalization-group theory. We end the review by discussing two theoretical approaches to treat the inhomogeneous imbalanced Fermi gas, namely the Landau-Ginzburg theory and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach. Key words:
We consider imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mix-tures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species both occupying only a single hyperfine state. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be differ-ent, which leads to a spin imbalance, or spin polarization. Two different atomic species also lead to a mass imbalance. Imbalanced Fermi gases are relevant to condensed-matter physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics. They have been studied intensively in recent years, following their experimental realization in ultracold atomic Fermi gases. The experimental control in such a system allows for a systematic study of the equation of state and the phase diagram as a function of temperature, spin polarization and interaction strength. In this re-view, we discuss the progress in understanding strongly-interacting imbalanced Fermi gases, where a main goal is to describe the results of the highly controlled experiments. We start by discussing Feshbach resonances, after which we treat the imbalanced Fermi gas in mean-field theory to give an introduction to the relevant physics. We encounter several unusual superfluid phases, including phase-separation, gapless Sarma superfluidity, and supersolidity. To obtain a more quantitative description of the experiments, we review also more sophisti-cated techniques, such as diagrammatic methods and the renormalization-group theory. We end the review by discussing two theoretical approaches to treat the inhomogeneous imbalanced Fermi gas, namely the Landau-Ginzburg theory and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach. Key words:
We consider ultracold imbalanced Fermi gases with strong attractive interactions, for which Cooper-pair formation plays an important role. The two-component mixtures consist either of identical fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, or of two different atomic species. In both cases, the number of atoms for each component is allowed to be different, leading to a spin imbalance or a polarization. In the second case, the two different species also give rise to a mass imbalance for the particles. Imbalanced Fermi mixtures play a fundamental role in condensed-matter, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Experimentally, the atomic mixtures are made strongly interacting with the use of two-channel Feshbach resonances. We start out by treating these in more detail. We review the relevant scattering theory, and apply it to the well-studied case of resonant s-wave collisions with zero angular momentum. Furthermore, we discuss the less-studied case of p-wave collisions with nonzero angular momentum, and the inhomogeneous case due to a trapping potential. Having discussed the two-body physics, we turn to the many-body physics. The pioneering experimental studies of Cooper pairing in lithium-6 mixtures with a spin imbalance were performed by Zwierlein et al. [Science 311, 492 (2006)] and Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. We study the mean-field theory for the polarized Fermi mixture to obtain a qualitative understanding of these experiments. In the unitarity limit, where the scattering length of the interatomic interaction diverges, the theory gives rise to two exotic superfluid phases that are absent in the balanced mixture. These are the gapless superfluid Sarma phase and the phase-separated phase. By using renormalization group techniques to account for the effects of strong interactions, we obtain also quantitative agreement with Monte-Carlo calculations and experiments. We then generalize our knowledge of the solely spin-imbalanced mixture to the mass-imbalanced case, where in particular the mixture consisting of lithium-6 and potassium-40 is experimentally promising. We study the mean-field phase diagram for this mixture in the unitarity limit, where we not only find phase separation and Sarma superfluidity, but also a Lifshitz point. The latter signals an instability towards a supersolid phase. We also include the effects of fluctuations, which do not alter the topology of the phase diagram. However, fluctuation effects lower the critical temperatures with an experimentally relevant factor of three. Finally, we study superfluidity in a fully polarized gas of potassium-40 atoms near a p-wave Feshbach resonance. In particular, we consider coherent Josephson oscillations between the superfluid components in the two channels of the resonance, whose frequencies contain a clear signature of the quantum phase transition that occurs as a function of applied magnetic field.
In this thesis, we study two-component Fermi mixtures in the presence of both a mass and a population imbalance. For a large part we focus on the experimentally available 6Li-40K mixture and on the phase transitions that can occur in this mixture. In the first part of this thesis, we study the extremely polarized two-component Fermi gas with a mass imbalance in the strongly interacting regime. Specifically, we focus on the mixture of 6Li and 40K atoms. In this interaction regime spin polarons, i.e., dressed minority atoms, form. We consider the spectral function for the minority atoms, from which the lifetime and the effective mass of the spin polaron can be determined. Moreover, we predict the radio-frequency spectrum and the momentum distribution for the spin polarons for experiments with 6Li and 40K atoms. Subsequently we study the relaxation of the motion of the Fermi polaron due to spin drag. In the second part, we develop an accurate theory of resonantly interacting Fermi mixtures with both spin and mass imbalance. We consider Fermi mixtures with arbitrary mass imbalances, but focus in particular on the 6Li-40K mixture. We determine the phase diagram of the mixture for different interaction strengths that lie on the BCS side of the Feshbach resonance. We also determine the universal phase diagram at unitarity. We find for the mixtures with a sufficiently large mass imbalance, that includes the 6Li-40K mixture, a Lifshitz point in the universal phase diagram that signals an instability towards a supersolid phase. In the last part of the thesis, we show that the ultracold three-dimensional 6Li-40K mixture at unitarity can exhibit the highly exotic Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluid phase. We determine the phase diagram for majorities of 40K atoms within mean-field theory taking the inhomogeneities of the fermion states into account exactly. We find two different inhomogeneous superfluid phases in mixtures with a majority of 40K atoms, namely the Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) phase with one inhomogeneous direction and a cubic phase (LO3) where three spatial translational symmetries are broken. We determine the transition between these two phases by solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations in the superfluid LO phase. Subsequently, we calculate the atomic density modulation of the atoms in the LO phase and show that it is sufficiently large to be visible in experiment.
We present an overview of recent developments in species-imbalanced (‘polarized’) Feshbach-resonant Fermi gases. We summarize the current status of thermodynamics of these systems in terms of a phase diagram as a function of the Feshbach resonance detuning, polarization and temperature. We review instabilities of the s -wave superfluidity across the Bose–Einstein condensation-to-Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer crossover to phase separation, Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov states, polarized molecular superfluidity and the normal state, driven by the species imbalance. We discuss different models and approximations of this system and compare their predictions with current experiments.
The main topic of these lectures is the physics of quantum degenerate atomic Fermi gases both under uniform confinement and in harmonic traps. To begin with, a general introduction on ideal Fermi gases is proposed. This "academic" limit is relevant in experiments where ultracold fermionic atoms are all polarized in a single spin state: the low atom momenta together with the fermionic nature of the atoms forbid atomic s-wave scattering and the atoms can be considered as free. Interactions are then introduced for the case of a gas with two spin components. Interactions can be tuned via Feshbach resonances and control the microscopic features of the superfluid phase, ranging from the BCS limit (formation of Cooper pairs) to the BEC limit (Bose-Einstein condensation of dimers). Various theoretical approaches for the description of the BCS-BEC crossover and their predictions in comparison with the experimental results are discussed.
It is quite common that several different phases exist simultaneously in a system of trapped quantum gases of ultra-cold atoms. One example is the strongly interacting Fermi gas with two imbalanced spin species, which has received a great deal of attention owing to the possible occurrence of exotic superfluid phases. By using novel numerical techniques and algorithms, we self-consistently solve the Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations, which describe Fermi superfluids in the mean-field framework. From this study, we investigate the novel phases of spin-imbalanced Fermi gases and examine the validity of local density approximation (LDA), which is often invoked in the extraction of bulk properties from experimental measurements within trapped systems. We show how the validity of the LDA is affected by the trapping geometry, the number of atoms and the spin imbalance.
Interacting Fermi gases are one of the chief paradigms of condensed matter physics. They have been studied since the beginning of the development of quantum mechanics, but continue to produce surprises today. Recent experimental developments in the field of ultracold atomic gases, as well as conventional solid state materials, have produced new and exotic forms of Fermi gases, the theoretical understanding of which is still in its infancy. This Thesis aims to provide updated tools and additional insights into some of these systems, through the application of both numerical and analytical techniques. The first Part of this Thesis is concerned with the development of improved numerical tools for the study of interacting Fermi gases. These tools take the form of accurate model potentials for the dipolar and contact interactions, as found in various ultracold atomic gas experiments, and a new form of Jastrow correlation factor that interpolates between the radial symmetry of the inter-electron Coulomb potential at short inter-particle distances, and the symmetry of the numerical simulation cell at large separation. These methods are designed primarily for use in quantum Monte Carlo numerical calculations, and provide high accuracy along with considerable acceleration of simulations. The second Part shifts focus to an analytical analysis of spin-imbalanced Fermi gases with an attractive contact interaction. The spin-imbalanced Fermi gas is shown to be unstable to the formation of multi-particle instabilities, generalisations of a Cooper pair containing more than two fermions, and then a theory of superconductivity is built from these instabilities. This multi-particle superconductivity is shown to be energetically favourable over conventional superconducting phases in spin-imbalanced Fermi gases, and its unusual experimental consequences are discussed.