Vortex line in the unitary Fermi gas

TL;DR

This paper uses diffusion Monte Carlo simulations to study vortex lines in a unitary Fermi gas, revealing properties like density profiles and excitation energies, with implications for understanding superfluid phenomena in strongly interacting systems.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed Monte Carlo analysis of vortex-line properties in a unitary Fermi gas, including energy and density profiles, extending methods to other strongly interacting superfluids.

Findings

Density profile shows non-zero density at vortex core

Calculated ground-state energy and pairing gap

Identified excitation energy per particle

Abstract

We report diffusion Monte Carlo results for the ground state of unpolarized spin-1/2 fermions in a cylindrical container and properties of the system with a vortex-line excitation. The density profile of the system with a vortex line presents a non-zero density at the core. We calculate the ground-state energy per particle, the superfluid pairing gap, and the excitation energy per particle. These simulations can be extended to calculate the properties of vortex excitations in other strongly interacting systems, such as superfluid neutron matter using realistic nuclear Hamiltonians.