Work

Quantum Liquid Crystals in an Imbalanced Fermi Gas: Fluctuations and Fractional Vortices in Larkin-Ovchinnikov States

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: 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.

Source: Physical Review Letters

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.103.010404

Authors: Leo Radzihovsky, Ashvin Vishwanath

Institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado System, University of California, Berkeley

Language: English

Topic: Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research

Awards: Liquid Crystal Order in Condensed Matter Systems, CAREER: Dynamics, Transport and Novel Phenomena at Quantum Phase Transitions