No Arabic abstract
We review the concepts and the present state of theoretical studies of spin-imbalanced superfluidity, in particular the elusive Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state, in the context of ultracold quantum gases. The comprehensive presentation of the theoretical basis for the FFLO state that we provide is useful also for research on the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity in other physical systems. We focus on settings that have been predicted to be favourable for the FFLO state, such as optical lattices in various dimensions and spin-orbit coupled systems. These are also the most likely systems for near-future experimental observation of the FFLO state. Theoretical bounds, such as Blochs and Luttingers theorems, and experimentally important limitations, such as finite-size effects and trapping potentials, are considered. In addition, we provide a comprehensive review of the various ideas presented for the observation of the FFLO state. We conclude our review with an analysis of the open questions related to the FFLO state, such as its stability, superfluid density, collective modes and extending the FFLO superfluid concept to new types of lattice systems.
We consider a two-component Fermi gas in the presence of spin imbalance, modeling the system in terms of a one-dimensional attractive Hubbard Hamiltonian initially in the presence of a confining trap potential. With the aid of the time-evolving block decimation method, we investigate the dynamics of the initial state when the trap is switched off. We show that the dynamics of a gas initially in the Fulde-Ferrel-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) state is decomposed into the independent expansion of two fluids, namely the paired and the unpaired particles. In particular, the expansion velocity of the unpaired cloud is shown to be directly related to the FFLO momentum. This provides an unambiguous signature of the FFLO state in a remarkably simple way.
We study the phase diagram in a two-dimensional Fermi gas with the synthetic spin-orbit coupling that has recently been realized experimentally. In particular, we characterize in detail the properties and the stability region of the unconventional Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states in such a system, which are induced by spin-orbit coupling and Fermi surface asymmetry. We identify several distinct nodal FFLO states by studying the topology of their respective gapless contours in momentum space. We then examine the phase structure and the number density distributions in a typical harmonic trapping potential under the local density approximation. Our studies provide detailed information on the FFLO pairing states with spin-orbit coupling and Fermi surface asymmetry, and will facilitate experimental detection of these interesting pairing states in the future.
The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) states, characterized by Cooper pairs condensed at finite-momentum are, at the same time, exotic and elusive. It is partially due to the fact that the FFLO states allow superconductivity to survive even in strong magnetic fields at the mean-field level. The effects of induced interactions at zero temperature are calculated in both clean and dirty cases, and it is found that the critical field at which the quantum phase transition to an FFLO state occurs at the mean-field level is strongly suppressed in imbalanced Fermi gases. This strongly shrinks the phase space region where the FFLO state is unstable and more exotic ground state is to be found. In the presence of high level impurities, this shrinkage may destroy the FFLO state completely.
Starting from the Ginzburg-Landau free energy describing the normal state to Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) state transition, we evaluate the free energy of seven most common lattice structures such as stripe, square, triangular,Simple Cubic (SC), Face centered Cubic (FCC),Body centered Cubic (BCC) and Quasi-crystal (QC). We find that the stripe phase which is the original LO state, is the most stable phase. This result maybe relevant to the detection of LOFF state in some heavy fermion compounds and the pairing lattice structure of fermions with unequal populations in the BCS side of Feshbach resonance in ultra-cold atoms.
The Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase is an unconventional superconducting state found under the influence of strong Zeeman field. This phase is identified by finite center-of-mass momenta in the Cooper pairs, causing the pairing amplitude to oscillate in real space. Repulsive correlations, on the other hand, smear out spatial inhomogeneities in d-wave superconductors. We investigate the FFLO state in a strongly correlated d-wave superconductor within a consolidated framework of Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory and Gutzwiller approximation. We find that the profound effects of strong correlations lie in shifting the BCS-FFLO phase boundary towards a lower Zeeman field and thereby enlarging the window of the FFLO phase. In the FFLO state, our calculation features a sharp mid-gap peak in the density of states, indicating the formation of strongly localized Andreev bound states. We also find that the signatures of the FFLO phase survive even in the presence of an additional translational symmetry breaking competing order in the ground state. This is demonstrated by considering a broken symmetry ground state with a simultaneous presence of the d-wave superconducting order and a spin-density wave order, often found in unconventional superconductors.