Single impurity in ultracold Fermi superfluids
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Rice Quantum Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77251 (United States)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics, Centre for Atom Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne 3122 (Australia)
- Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433 (China)
The role of impurities as experimental probes in the detection of quantum material properties is well appreciated. Here we study the effect of a single classical magnetic impurity in trapped ultracold Fermi superfluids. Depending on its shape and strength, a magnetic impurity can induce single or multiple midgap bound states in a superfluid Fermi gas. The multiple midgap states could coincide with the development of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase within the superfluid. As an analog of the scanning tunneling microsope, we propose a modified rf spectroscopic method to measure the local density of states which can be employed to detect these states and other quantum phases of cold atoms. A key result of our self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes calculations is that a magnetic impurity can controllably induce an FFLO state at currently accessible experimental parameters.
- OSTI ID:
- 21550021
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. A, Vol. 83, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.83.061604; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1050-2947
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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