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arXiv:cond-mat/0512596 · Physical Review A

Understanding the superfluid phase diagram in trapped Fermi gases

Qijin Chen, Cindy A. Regal, Markus Greiner, D. S. Jin, Kathryn Levin

Published Apr 5, 2006• 24 citations
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Abstract

Trapped ultracold Fermi gases provide a system that can be tuned between the BCS and Bose-Einstein condensation regimes by means of a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance. Condensation of fermionic atom pairs in a $^{40}\mathrm{K}$ gas was demonstrated experimentally by a sweep technique that pairwise projects fermionic atoms onto molecules. In this paper, we examine previous data obtained with this technique that probed the phase boundary in the temperature-magnetic field plane. Comparison of the $^{40}\mathrm{K}$ data to a theoretically computed phase diagram demonstrates good agreement between the two.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.041601

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Trapped ultracold Fermi gases provide a system that can be tuned between the BCS and Bose-Einstein condensation regimes by means of a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance. Condensation of fermionic atom pairs in a 40K^{40}\mathrm{K}40K gas was demonstrated experimentally by a sweep technique that pairwise projects fermionic atoms onto molecules. In this paper, we examine previous data obtained with this technique that probed the phase boundary in the temperature-magnetic field plane. Comparison of the 40K^{40}\mathrm{K}40K data to a theoretically computed phase diagram demonstrates good agreement between the two.
We determine the adiabatic phase diagram of a resonantly-coupled system of Fermi atoms and Bose molecules confined in the harmonic trap by using the local density approximation. The adiabatic phase diagram shows the fermionic condensate fraction composed of condensed molecules and Cooper pair atoms. The key idea of our work is conservation of entropy through the adiabatic process, extending the study of Williams et al. [Williams et al., New J. Phys. 6, 123 (2004)] for an ideal gas mixture to include the resonant interaction in a mean-field theory. We also calculate the molecular conversion efficiency as a function of initial temperature. Our work helps to understand recent experiments on the BCS-BEC crossover, in terms of the initial temperature measured before a sweep of the magnetic field.
We have observed condensation of fermionic atom pairs in the BCS-BEC crossover regime. A trapped gas of fermionic 40K atoms is evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy and then a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance is used to control the atom-atom interactions. The location of this resonance is precisely determined from low-density measurements of molecule dissociation. In order to search for condensation on either side of the resonance, we introduce a technique that pairwise projects fermionic atoms onto molecules; this enables us to measure the momentum distribution of fermionic atom pairs. The transition to condensation of fermionic atom pairs is mapped out as a function of the initial atom gas temperature T compared to the Fermi temperature T(F) for magnetic-field detunings on both the BCS and BEC sides of the resonance.
This thesis presents experiments probing physics in the crossover between Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and BCS superconductivity using an ultracold gas of atomic fermions. Scattering resonances in these ultracold gases (known as Feshbach resonances) provide the unique ability to tune the fermion-fermion interactions. The work presented here pioneered the use of fermionic Feshbach resonances as a highly controllable and tunable system ideal for studying the cusp of the BCS-BEC crossover problem. Here pairs of fermionic atoms have some properties of diatomic molecules and some properties of Cooper pairs. I present studies of a normal Fermi gas at a Feshbach resonance and the work required to cool the gas to temperatures where superfluidity in the crossover is predicted. These studies culminated in our observation of a phase transition at the cusp of the BCS-BEC crossover through condensation of fermionic atom pairs. I also discuss subsequent work that confirmed the crossover nature of the pairs in these condensates.
Fast-sweep projection onto Feshbach molecules has been widely used as a probe of fermionic condensates. By determining the exact dynamics of a pair of atoms in time-varying magnetic fields, we calculate the number of condensed and noncondensed molecules created after fast magnetic field sweeps from the BCS to the Bose-Einstein condensate side of the resonances in 40K and 6Li, for different sweep rates and a range of initial and final fields. We discuss the relation between the initial fermionic condensate fraction and the molecular condensate fraction measured after the sweep.
The physics of quantum degenerate atomic Fermi gases in uniform as well as in harmonically trapped configurations is reviewed from a theoretical perspective. Emphasis is given to the effect of interactions that play a crucial role, bringing the gas into a superfluid phase at low temperature. In these dilute systems, interactions are characterized by a single parameter, the sss-wave scattering length, whose value can be tuned using an external magnetic field near a broad Feshbach resonance. The BCS limit of ordinary Fermi superfluidity, the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dimers, and the unitary limit of large scattering length are important regimes exhibited by interacting Fermi gases. In particular, the BEC and the unitary regimes are characterized by a high value of the superfluid critical temperature, on the order of the Fermi temperature. Different physical properties are discussed, including the density profiles and the energy of the ground-state configurations, the momentum distribution, the fraction of condensed pairs, collective oscillations and pair-breaking effects, the expansion of the gas, the main thermodynamic properties, the behavior in the presence of optical lattices, and the signatures of superfluidity, such as the existence of quantized vortices, the quenching of the moment of inertia, and the consequences of spin polarization. Various theoretical approaches are considered, ranging from the mean-field description of the BCS-BEC crossover to nonperturbative methods based on quantum Monte Carlo techniques. A major goal of the review is to compare theoretical predictions with available experimental results.
We calculate the phase diagrams for a harmonically trapped ideal gas mixture of fermionic atoms and bosonic molecules in chemical and thermal equilibrium, where the internal energy of the molecules can be adjusted relative to that of the atoms by use of a tunable Feshbach resonance. We plot the molecule fraction and the fraction of Bose-condensed molecules as functions of the temperature and internal molecular energy. We show the paths traversed in the phase diagrams when the molecular energy is varied either suddenly or adiabatically. Our model calculation helps to interpret the adiabatic phase diagrams obtained in recent experiments on the Bose–Einstein condensation to Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer crossover, in which the condensate fraction is plotted as a function of the initial temperature of the Fermi gas measured before a sweep of the magnetic field through the resonance region.