Co-existence and shell structures of several superfluids in trapped three-component Fermi mixtures

TL;DR

This paper investigates a three-component trapped Fermi gas with mass imbalance, revealing complex phase structures, co-existing superfluids with shell formations, and phase transitions observable via density profiles.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of co-existing superfluids forming shell structures in a three-component Fermi mixture with mass imbalance, and explores tunable phase transitions.

Findings

Multiple superfluid phases coexist in the trap.

Shell structures with different superfluids are predicted.

Observable density profile signatures of phase transitions.

Abstract

We study the properties of a trapped interacting three component Fermi gas. We assume that one of the components can have a different mass from the other two. We calculate the different phases of the three component mixture and find a rich variety of different phases corresponding to different pairing channels, and simple ways of tuning the system from one phase to another. In particular, we predict co-existence of several different superfluids in the trap, forming a shell structure, and phase transitions from this mixture of superfluids to a single superfluid when the system parameters or temperature is varied. Such shell structures realize superfluids with a non-trivial spatial topology and leave clear observable signatures in the density profile of the gas.