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Finite-temperature phase diagram of a polarized Fermi condensate

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Abstract

The two-component Fermi gas is the simplest fermion system exhibiting superfluidity, and as such is relevant to topics ranging from superconductivity to quantum chromodynamics. Ultracold atomic gases provide an exceptionally clean realization of this system, where interatomic interactions and atom spin populations are both independently tuneable. Here we show that the finite-temperature phase diagram contains a region of phase separation between the superfluid and normal states that touches the boundary of second-order superfluid transitions at a tricritical point, reminiscent of the phase diagram of 3He–4He mixtures. A variation of interaction strength then results in a line of tricritical points that terminates at zero temperature on the molecular Bose–Einstein condensate side. On this basis, we argue that tricritical points are fundamental to understanding experiments on polarized atomic Fermi gases.

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Figure 1: The zero-temperature phase diagram within mean-field theory for both Zeeman field h/ɛF and magnetization m/n (inset) versus interaction 1/kFa.
Figure 2: Finite-temperature phase diagram as a function of magnetization m/n and interaction 1/kFa.
Figure 3: Finite-temperature phase diagram for the two-channel model of a narrow Feshbach resonance, where the coupling between open and closed channels is weak: γ=0.1.
Figure 4: Phase diagram at 1/kFa=0 in the μ/h–T/h plane.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to P. B. Littlewood for stimulating discussions and J. Keeling for help with the numerics. This work has been supported by the EPSRC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cavendish Laboratory, J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK

    M. M. Parish, F. M. Marchetti & B. D. Simons

  2. Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3NP, UK

    A. Lamacraft

  3. All Souls College, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK

    A. Lamacraft

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  1. M. M. Parish
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Correspondence to M. M. Parish.

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Parish, M., Marchetti, F., Lamacraft, A. et al. Finite-temperature phase diagram of a polarized Fermi condensate. Nature Phys 3, 124–128 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys520

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