Phase diagram, extended domain walls, and soft collective modes in a three component fermionic superfluid

TL;DR

This paper explores the phase diagram of a three-component Fermi gas, revealing the existence of domain walls and soft collective modes that influence fluctuations and challenge local density approximation assumptions.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of domain walls and soft modes in a three-component Fermi superfluid, providing new insights into their effects on phase transitions and system behavior.

Findings

Existence of domain walls between superfluid phases introduces a new length scale.

Soft collective modes with low mass significantly enhance fluctuations near phase transitions.

Limitations of local density approximation in the presence of domain walls are discussed.

Abstract

We study the phase diagram of a three-component Fermi gas with weak attractive interactions, which shows three superfluid and one normal phases. At weak symmetry breaking between the components the existence of domain walls interpolating between two superfluids introduces a new length scale much larger than the coherence length of each superfluid. This, in particular, limits the applicability of the local density approximation in the trapped case, which we also discuss. In the same regime the system hosts soft collective modes with a mass much smaller than the energy gaps of individual superfluids. We derive their dispersion relations at zero and finite temperatures and demonstrate that their presence leads to a significant enhancement of fluctuations near the superfluid-normal transitions.