We analyze the properties of a single impurity immersed in a Fermi sea. At
positive energy and scattering lengths, we show that the system possesses a
well-defined but metastable excitation, the repulsive polaron, and we calculate
its energy, quasiparticle residue and effective mass. From a thermodynamic
argument we obtain the number of particles in the dressing cloud, illustrating
the repulsive character of the polaron. Identifying the important 2- and 3-body
decay channels, we furthermore calculate the lifetime of the repulsive polaron.
The stability conditions for the formation of fully spin polarized
(ferromagnetic) domains are then examined for a binary mixture of atoms with a
general mass ratio. Our results indicate that mass imbalance lowers the
critical interaction strength for phase-separation, but that very short
quasiparticle decay times will complicate the experimental observation of
itinerant ferromagnetism. Finally, we present the spectral function of the
impurity for various coupling strengths and momenta.Comment: Substantial improvements to the section describing quasiparticle
decays (included a discussion of two-body and three-body processes), and to
the criteria for the stability of the itinerant ferromagnetic phas
