Two-component Fermi gas with a resonant interaction

We consider a two-component Fermi gas interacting via a Feshbach molecular state. It is shown that an important energy scale is $E_g=g^4m^3/(64\pi^2)$ where $g$ is the Feshbach coupling constant and $m$ the mass of the particles. Only when $E_g\gg \epsilon_{\rm F}$ where $\epsilon_{\rm F}$ is the Fermi energy can the gas be expected to enter a universal state in the unitarity limit on the atomic side of the resonance where there are no molecules present. The universal state is distinct from the molecular gas state on the other side of the resonance. We furthermore calculate the energy of the gas for this universal state and our results are related to current experiments on $^{6}$Li and $^{40}$K.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Frequency and damping of the Scissors Mode of a Fermi gas

We calculate the frequency and damping of the scissors mode in a classical gas as a function of temperature and coupling strength. Our results show good agreement with the main features observed in recent measurements of the scissors mode in an ultracold gas of $^6$Li atoms. The comparison between theory and experiment involves no fitting parameters and thus allows an identification of non-classical effects at and near the unitarity limit.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Validity of the Gor'kov expansion near the upper critical field in type II superconductors

We have examined the validity of the Gor'kov expansion in the strength of the order parameter of type II superconductors near the upper critical field. Although the degeneracy of the electron levels in a magnetic field gives non- perturbative terms in the solution to the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations we find, contrary to recent claims, that these non-perturbative terms cancel in the expression for the thermodynamic potential, and that the traditional Gor'kov theory is correct sufficiently close to Hc2 at finite temperature. We have derived conditions for the validity of the Gor'kov theory which essentially state, that the change in the quasiparticle energies as compared to the normal state energies cannot be too large compared to the temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. One reference adde

Magnetic and superfluid phases of confined fermions in two-dimensional optical lattices

We examine antiferromagnetic and d-wave superfluid phases of cold fermionic atoms with repulsive interactions in a two-dimensional optical lattice combined with a harmonic trapping potential. For experimentally realistic parameters, the trapping potential leads to the coexistence of magnetic and superfluid ordered phases with the normal phase. We study the intriguing shell structures arising from the competition between the magnetic and superfluid order as a function of the filling fraction. In certain cases antiferromagnetism induce superfluidity by charge redistributions. We furthermore demonstrate how these shell structures can be detected as distinct anti-bunching dips and pairing peaks in the density-density correlation function probed in expansion experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Few-body precursor of the Higgs mode in a superfluid Fermi gas

We demonstrate that an undamped few-body precursor of the Higgs mode can be investigated in a harmonically trapped Fermi gas. Using exact diagonalisation, the lowest monopole mode frequency is shown to depend non-monotonically on the interaction strength, having a minimum in a crossover region. The minimum deepens with increasing particle number, reflecting that the mode is the few-body analogue of a many-body Higgs mode in the superfluid phase, which has a vanishing frequency at the quantum phase transition point to the normal phase. We show that this mode mainly consists of coherent excitations of time-reversed pairs, and that it can be selectively excited by modulating the interaction strength, using for instance a Feshbach resonance in cold atomic gases.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Tunable Wigner States with Dipolar Atoms and Molecules

We study the few-body physics of trapped atoms or molecules with electric or magnetic dipole moments aligned by an external field. Using exact numerical diagonalization appropriate for the strongly correlated regime, as well as a classical analysis, we show how Wigner localization emerges with increasing coupling strength. The Wigner states exhibit non-trivial geometries due to the anisotropy of the interaction. This leads to transitions between different Wigner states as the tilt angle of the dipoles with the confining plane is changed. Intriguingly, while the individual Wigner states are well described by a classical analysis, the transitions between different Wigner states are strongly affected by quantum statistics. This can be understood by considering the interplay between quantum-mechanical and spatial symmetry properties. Finally, we demonstrate that our results are relevant to experimentally realistic systems.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure