Trapped p-wave superfluids: a local density approach

TL;DR

This paper investigates the ground state properties of trapped p-wave Fermi gases using a local density approximation, revealing a non-monotonic density evolution linked to a topological phase transition, with potential experimental detection methods.

Contribution

It introduces a local density approach to analyze the superfluid phases of p-wave Fermi gases, highlighting the connection between density profiles and topological phase transitions.

Findings

Density distribution changes from bimodal to unimodal with increasing attraction.

The transition from gapless to gapped phases is topological and detectable via spectroscopy.

Density saturation occurs on the BEC side of the interaction spectrum.

Abstract

The local density approximation is used to study the ground state superfluid properties of harmonically trapped p-wave Fermi gases as a function of fermion-fermion attraction strength. While the density distribution is bimodal on the weakly attracting BCS side, it becomes unimodal with increasing attraction and saturates towards the BEC side. This non-monotonic evolution is related to the topological gapless to gapped phase transition, and may be observed via radio-frequency spectroscopy since quasi-particle transfer current requires a finite threshold only on the BEC side.