Density and spin response of a strongly interacting Fermi gas in the attractive and quasirepulsive regime.

Recent experimental advances in ultracold Fermi gases allow for exploring response functions under different dynamical conditions. In particular, the issue of obtaining a "quasirepulsive" regime starting from a Fermi gas with an attractive interparticle interaction while avoiding the formation of the two-body bound state is currently debated. Here, we provide a calculation of the density and spin response for a wide range of temperature and coupling both in the attractive and quasirepulsive regime, whereby the system is assumed to evolve nonadiabatically toward the "upper branch" of the Fermi gas.

Evolution of the normal state of a strongly interacting Fermi gas from a pseudogap phase to a molecular Bose gas.

Wave-vector resolved radio frequency spectroscopy data for an ultracold trapped Fermi gas are reported for several couplings at T(c), and extensively analyzed in terms of a pairing-fluctuation theory. We map the evolution of a strongly interacting Fermi gas from the pseudogap phase into a fully gapped molecular Bose gas as a function of the interaction strength, which is marked by a rapid disappearance of a remnant Fermi surface in the single-particle dispersion. We also show that our theory of a pseudogap phase is consistent with a recent experimental observation as well as with quantum Monte Carlo data of thermodynamic quantities of a unitary Fermi gas above T(c).

Competition between final-state and pairing-gap effects in the radio-frequency spectra of ultracold Fermi atoms.

The radio-frequency spectra of ultracold Fermi atoms are calculated by including final-state interactions affecting the excited level of the transition and compared with the experimental data. A competition is revealed between pairing-gap effects which tend to push the oscillator strength toward high frequencies away from threshold and final-state effects which tend instead to pull the oscillator strength toward threshold. As a result of this competition, the position of the peak of the spectra cannot be simply related to the value of the pairing gap, whose extraction thus requires support from theoretical calculations.

Josephson effect throughout the BCS-BEC crossover.

We study the stationary Josephson effect for neutral fermions across the BCS-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensate) crossover, by solving numerically the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations at zero temperature. The Josephson current is found to be considerably enhanced for all barriers at about unitarity. For vanishing barrier, the Josephson critical current approaches the Landau limiting value which, depending on the coupling, is determined by either pair-breaking or sound-mode excitations.

Trapped fermions with density imbalance in the Bose-Einstein condensate limit.

We analyze the effects of imbalancing the populations of two-component trapped fermions, in the Bose-Einstein condensate limit of the attractive interaction between different fermions. Starting from the gap equation with two fermionic chemical potentials, we derive a set of coupled equations that describe composite bosons and excess fermions. We include in these equations the processes leading to the correct dimer-dimer and dimer-fermion scattering lengths.