Condensed Fermi systems with an odd number of particles can be described by means of polarizing external fields having a time-odd character. We illustrate how this works for Fermi gases and atomic nuclei treated by density functional theory or Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) theory. We discuss the method based on introducing two chemical potentials for different superfluid components, whereby one may change the particle-number parity of the underlying quasiparticle vacuum. Formally, this method is a variant of non-collective cranking, and the procedure is equivalent to the so-called blocking. We present and exemplify relations between the two-chemical-potential method and the cranking approximation for Fermi gases and nuclei.
Download