New type of crossover physics in three-component Fermi gases

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase diagram of three-component Fermi gases near Feshbach resonances, revealing a novel crossover physics involving Lifshitz transitions, atom-trimer continuity, and quantum critical points.

Contribution

It introduces a new understanding of crossover phenomena and phase transitions in three-component Fermi gases, including the atom-trimer continuity and the effects of resonance range.

Findings

Existence of a Lifshitz transition between superfluids with and without unpaired Fermi surface.

Smooth atom-trimer continuity analogous to quark-hadron transition.

Identification of a superfluid depletion window with quantum critical points.

Abstract

A three-component Fermi gas near a broad Feshbach resonance does not have a universal ground state due to the Thomas collapse, while it does near a narrow Feshbach resonance. We explore its universal phase diagram in the plane of the inverse scattering length 1/akF and the resonance range RkF. For a large RkF, there exists a Lifshitz transition between superfluids with and without an unpaired Fermi surface as a function of 1/akF. With decreasing RkF, the Fermi surface coexisting with the superfluid can change smoothly from that of atoms to trimers ("atom-trimer continuity"), corresponding to the quark-hadron continuity in a dense nuclear matter. Eventually, there appears a finite window in 1/akF where the superfluid is completely depleted by the trimer Fermi gas, which gives rise to a pair of quantum critical points. The boundaries of these three quantum phases are determined in regions where controlled analyses are possible and are also evaluated based on a mean-field plus trimer model.