Heavy-light fermion mixtures at unitarity

Alexandros Gezerlis, S. Gandolfi, Kevin Schmidt, J. Carlson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

55 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate fermion pairing in the unitary regime for a mass ratio corresponding to a Li6-K40 mixture using quantum Monte Carlo methods. The ground-state energy and the average light- and heavy-particle excitation spectrum for the unpolarized superfluid state are nearly independent of the mass ratio. In the majority light system, the polarized superfluid is close to the energy of a phase separated mixture of nearly fully polarized normal and unpolarized superfluid. For a majority of heavy particles, we find an energy minimum for a normal state with a ratio of ∼31 heavy to light particles. A slight increase in attraction to kFa2.5 yields a ground state energy of nearly zero for this ratio. A cold unpolarized system in a harmonic trap at unitarity should phase separate into three regions, with a shell of unpolarized superfluid in the middle.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number060403
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume103
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 5 2009

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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