Quantum Liquid Crystals in an Imbalanced Fermi Gas: Fluctuations and Fractional Vortices in Larkin-Ovchinnikov States
- Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309 (United States) and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94703 (United States)
We develop a low-energy model of an unidirectional Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) state. Because the underlying rotational and translational symmetries are broken spontaneously, this gapless superfluid is a smectic liquid crystal, that exhibits fluctuations that are qualitatively stronger than in a conventional superfluid, thus requiring a fully nonlinear description of its Goldstone modes. Consequently, at nonzero temperature the LO superfluid is an algebraic phase even in 3D. It exhibits half-integer vortex-dislocation defects, whose unbinding leads to transitions to a superfluid nematic and other phases. In 2D at nonzero temperature, the LO state is always unstable to a nematic superfluid. We expect this superfluid liquid-crystal phenomenology to be realizable in imbalanced resonant Fermi gases trapped isotropically.
- OSTI ID:
- 21347011
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 103, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.010404; (c) 2009 The American Physical Society; ISSN 0031-9007
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
DISLOCATIONS
ENERGY MODELS
FERMI GAS
FLUCTUATIONS
LIQUID CRYSTALS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
SUPERFLUIDITY
SYMMETRY
CRYSTAL DEFECTS
CRYSTAL STRUCTURE
CRYSTALS
FLUIDS
LINE DEFECTS
LIQUIDS
VARIATIONS