The Superfluid State of Atomic Li6 in a Magnetic Trap

TL;DR

This paper investigates the superfluid state of spin-polarized atomic Li6 in a magnetic trap, analyzing density profiles, stability, decay rates, and proposing experimental signatures of superfluidity.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of the superfluid phase in Li6, including density distributions, stability conditions, decay rates, and experimental detection methods.

Findings

Critical temperature depends on the number of particles in the trap.

The gas remains stable and has a long lifetime under certain magnetic fields.

Decay rate measurements could indicate superfluidity presence.

Abstract

We report on a study of the superfluid state of spin-polarized atomic Li6 confined in a magnetic trap. Density profiles of this degenerate Fermi gas, and the spatial distribution of the BCS order parameter are calculated in the local density approximation. The critical temperature is determined as a function of the number of particles in the trap. Furthermore we consider the mechanical stability of an interacting two-component Fermi gas, both in the case of attractive and repulsive interatomic interactions. For spin-polarized Li6 we also calculate the decay rate of the gas, and show that within the mechanically stable regime of phase space, the lifetime is long enough to perform experiments on the gas below and above the critical temperature if a bias magnetic field of about 5 T is applied. Moreover, we propose that a measurement of the decay rate of the system might signal the presence of the superfluid state.