# Expansion of the strongly interacting superfluid Fermi gas: symmetries and self-similar regimes

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes the expansion dynamics of a strongly interacting superfluid Fermi gas at unitarity, revealing symmetries, self-similar regimes, and the connection to classical hydrodynamics and the virial theorem.

## Contribution

It introduces a self-similar solution framework for the gas expansion, linking quantum symmetries with classical hydrodynamics and the virial theorem in the unitary regime.

## Key findings

- Asymptotic expansion matches the quasi-classical self-similar solution.
- Virial theorem governs the expansion dynamics.
- Self-similar solutions describe shape deformations during expansion.

## Abstract

We consider an expansion of the strongly interacting superfluid Fermi gas in a vacuum, assuming absence of the trapping potential, in the so-called unitary regime (see, for instance, \cite{pitaevskii2008superfluid}) when the chemical potential $\mu \propto \hbar^2n^{2/3}/m$ where $n$ is the density of the Bose-Einstein condensate of Cooper pairs of fermionic atoms. In low temperatures, $T\to 0$, such expansion can be described in the framework of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE). Because of the chemical potential dependence on the density, $\sim n^{2/3}$, the GPE has additional symmetries, resulting in the existence of the virial theorem \cite% {vlasov1971averaged}, connecting the mean size of the gas cloud and its Hamiltonian. It leads asymptotically at $t\to\infty$ to the gas cloud expansion, linearly growing in time. We study such asymptotics, and reveal the perfect match between the quasi-classical self-similar solution and the asymptotic expansion of the non-interacting gas. This match is governed by the virial theorem, derived through utilizing the Talanov transformation \cite{talanov1970focusing}, which was first obtained for the stationary self-focusing of light in media with a cubic nonlinearity due to the Kerr effect. In the quasi-classical limit, the equations of motion coincide with 3D hydrodynamics for the perfect monoatomic gas with $\gamma=5/3$. Their self-similar solution describes, on the background of the gas expansion, the angular deformities of the gas shape in the framework of the Ermakov--Ray--Reid type system.