Polarized Fermi condensates with unequal masses: tuning the tricritical point

Quartet Superfluid in Two-Dimensional Mass-Imbalanced Fermi Mixtures

Quartet superfluid (QSF) is a distinct type of fermion superfluidity that exhibits high-order correlation beyond the conventional BCS pairing paradigm. In this Letter, we report the emergent QSF in 2D mass-imbalanced Fermi mixtures with two-body contact interactions. This is facilitated by the formation of a quartet bound state in vacuum that consists of a light atom and three heavy fermions. For an optimized heavy-light number ratio 3:1, we identify QSF as the ground state in a considerable parameter regime of mass imbalance and 2D coupling strength. Its unique high-order correlation can be manifested in the momentum-space crystallization of a pairing field and density distribution of heavy fermions. Our results can be readily detected in Fermi-Fermi mixtures nowadays realized in cold atoms laboratories, and meanwhile shed light on exotic superfluidity in a broad context of mass-imbalanced fermion mixtures.

Effective potential and quantum criticality for imbalanced Fermi mixtures

We study the analytical structure of the effective action for spin- and mass-imbalanced Fermi mixtures at the onset of the superfluid state. Of our particular focus is the possibility of suppressing the tricritical temperature to zero, so that the transition remains continuous down to T  =  0 and the phase diagram hosts a quantum critical point. At mean-field level we analytically identify such a possibility in a regime of parameters in dimensionality d  =  3. In contrast, in d  =  2 we demonstrate that the occurrence of a quantum critical point is (at the mean-field level) excluded. We show that the Landau expansion of the effective potential remains well-defined in the limit [Formula: see text] except for a subset of model parameters which includes the standard BCS limit. We calculate the mean-field asymptotic shape of the transition line. Employing the functional renormalization group framework we go beyond the mean field theory and demonstrate the stability of the quantum critical point in d  =  3 with respect to fluctuations.

Probing the Interface of a Phase-Separated State in a Repulsive Bose-Fermi Mixture

We probe the interface between a phase-separated Bose-Fermi mixture consisting of a small Bose-Einstein condensate of ^{41}K residing in a large Fermi sea of ^{6}Li. We quantify the residual spatial overlap between the two components by measuring three-body recombination losses for variable strength of the interspecies repulsion. A comparison with a numerical mean-field model highlights the importance of the kinetic energy term for the condensed bosons in maintaining the thin interface far into the phase-separated regime. Our results demonstrate a corresponding smoothing of the phase transition in a system of finite size.

Accurate Determination of the Dynamical Polarizability of Dysprosium

We report a measurement of the dynamical polarizability of dysprosium atoms in their electronic ground state at the optical wavelength of 1064 nm, which is of particular interest for laser trapping experiments. Our method is based on collective oscillations in an optical dipole trap, and reaches unprecedented accuracy and precision by comparison with an alkali atom (potassium) as a reference species. We obtain values of 184.4(2.4) and 1.7(6) a.u. for the scalar and tensor polarizability, respectively. Our experiments have reached a level that permits meaningful tests of current theoretical descriptions and provides valuable information for future experiments utilizing the intriguing properties of heavy lanthanide atoms.

Zero-temperature equation of state of mass-imbalanced resonant Fermi gases

We calculate the zero-temperature equation of state of mass-imbalanced resonant Fermi gases in an ab initio fashion, by implementing the recent proposal of imaginary-valued mass difference to bypass the sign problem in lattice Monte Carlo calculations. The fully nonperturbative results thus obtained are analytically continued to real mass-imbalance to yield the physical equation of state, providing predictions for upcoming experiments with mass-imbalanced atomic Fermi gases. In addition, we present an exact relation for the rate of change of the equation of state at small mass imbalances, showing that it is fully determined by the energy of the mass-balanced system.

Tuning the tricritical point with spin-orbit coupling in polarized fermionic condensates

We investigate a two-component atomic Fermi gas with population imbalance in the presence of Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC). As a competition between SOC and population imbalance, the finite-temperature phase diagram reveals a large variety of new features, including the expanding of the superfluid state regime and the shrinking of both the phase separation and the normal regimes. For sufficiently strong SOC, the phase separation region disappears, giving way to the superfluid state. We find that the tricritical point moves toward a regime of low temperature, high magnetic field, and high polarization as the SOC increases.

Breakdown of universality for unequal-mass Fermi gases with infinite scattering length

We treat small trapped unequal-mass two-component Fermi gases at unitarity within a nonperturbative microscopic framework and investigate the system properties as functions of the mass ratio κ, and the numbers N1 and N2 of heavy and light fermions. While equal-mass Fermi gases with infinitely large interspecies s-wave scattering length a(s) are universal, we find that unequal-mass Fermi gases are, for sufficiently large κ and in the regime where Efimov physics is absent, not universal. In particular, the (N₁,N₂) = (2, 1) and (3, 1) systems exhibit three-body and four-body resonances at κ=12.314(2) and 10.4(2), respectively, as well as surprisingly large finite-range effects. These findings have profound implications for ongoing experimental efforts and quantum simulation proposals that utilize unequal-mass atomic Fermi gases.

Lifshitz point in the phase diagram of resonantly interacting 6Li-40K mixtures

We consider a strongly interacting 6Li-40K mixture, which is imbalanced both in the masses and the densities of the two fermionic species. At present, it is the experimentalist's favorite for reaching the superfluid regime. We construct an effective thermodynamic potential that leads to excellent agreement with Monte Carlo results for the normal state. We use it to determine the universal phase diagram of the mixture in the unitarity limit, where we find, in contrast to the mass-balanced case, the presence of a Lifshitz point. This point is characterized by the effective mass of the Cooper pairs becoming negative, which signals an instability towards a supersolid phase.

Phase separation in a polarized Fermi gas at zero temperature

We investigate the phase diagram of asymmetric two-component Fermi gases at zero temperature as a function of polarization and interaction strength. The equations of state of the uniform superfluid and normal phase are determined using quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We find three different mixed states, where the superfluid and the normal phase coexist in equilibrium, corresponding to phase separation between (a) the polarized superfluid and the fully polarized normal gas, (b) the polarized superfluid and the partially polarized normal gas, and (c) the unpolarized superfluid and the partially polarized normal gas.