Published November 26, 2014 | Version v1
Journal article

Interaction energy and itinerant ferromagnetism in a strongly interacting Fermi gas in the absence of molecule formation

  • 1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Description

In this study, we investigate the interaction energy and the possibility of itinerant ferromagnetism in a strongly interacting Fermi gas at zero temperature in the absence of molecule formation. The interaction energy is obtained by summing the perturbative contributions of Galitskii-Feynman type to all orders in the gas parameter. It can be expressed by a simple phase-space integral of an in-medium scattering phase shift. In both three and two dimensions (3D and 2D), the interaction energy shows a maximum before reaching the resonance from the Bose-Einstein condensate side, which provides a possible explanation of the experimental measurements of the interaction energy. This phenomenon can be theoretically explained by the qualitative change of the nature of the binary interaction in the medium. The appearance of an energy maximum has significant effects on the itinerant ferromagnetism. In 3D, the ferromagnetic transition is reentrant and itinerant ferromagnetism exists in a narrow window around the energy maximum. In 2D, the present theoretical approach suggests that itinerant ferromagnetism does not exist, which reflects the fact that the energy maximum becomes much lower than the energy of the fully polarized state

Availability note (English)

Available from: DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.90.053633; DOE Accepted Manuscript full text, or the publishers Best Available Version will be available free of charge after the embargo period from OSTI using http://www.osti.gov/pages/biblio/1238677

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. A
Journal Volume
90
Journal Issue
5
Journal Page Range
vp.
ISSN
1050-2947
CODEN
PLRAAN

INIS

Optional Information

Contract/Grant/Project number
AC52-06NA25396
Funding organization
USDOE (United States)
Secondary number(s)
LA-UR--14-23537; OSTIID--1238677