Phase diagrams for an ideal gas mixture of fermionic atoms and bosonic molecules

TL;DR

This paper calculates phase diagrams for an ideal gas mixture of fermionic atoms and bosonic molecules, aiding interpretation of experimental BEC-BCS crossover data.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework for understanding phase transitions in a tunable atom-molecule mixture in harmonic traps.

Findings

Phase diagrams as functions of temperature and molecular energy.

Paths of phase changes during adiabatic and sudden energy variations.

Interpretation of experimental adiabatic phase diagrams in BEC-BCS crossover.

Abstract

We calculate the phase diagrams for a harmonically trapped ideal gas mixture of fermionic atoms and bosonic molecules in chemical and thermal equilibrium, where the internal energy of the molecules can be adjusted relative to that of the atoms by use of a tunable Feshbach resonance. We plot the molecule fraction and the fraction of Bose-condensed molecules as functions of the temperature and internal molecular energy. We show the paths traversed in the phase diagrams when the molecular energy is varied either suddenly or adiabatically. Our model calculation helps to interpret the {\it{adiabatic}} phase diagrams obtained in recent experiments on the BEC-BCS crossover, in which the condensate fraction is plotted as a function of the {\it{initial}} temperature of the Fermi gas measured before a sweep of the magnetic field through the resonance region.