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The vortex state in a strongly coupled dilute atomic fermionic superfluid

A. Bulgac and Y. Yu

J. Carlson et al. [76] have computed recently the properties of a many-fermion system interacting with an infinite scattering length. Even though this problem has been addressed before by other authors, this is perhaps the best and most reliable estimate of the ground state energy of a many-fermion system in its normal and superfluid states. Since a dilute degenerate fermi gas has been created already experimentally [77] the challenge is to establish whether such a system is also superfluid, as the Bose counterparts have been shown to be. The direct observation of stable vortices would be the most convincing evidence of superfluidity. It was long believed that in a fermi superfluid the vortex core, which is largely a normal fermi liquid, has essentially the same density as the supefluid part and thus it would be difficult to visualize vortices, unlike their counterparts in Bose superfluids. In ref. [78] we have been able to dispel this myth and have shown that in the BCS-BEC transition region vortices in fermi superfluids develop a strong density depletion along the vortex core. This feature can make a direct visualization of vortices in Fermionic superfluids possible.


next up previous contents
Next: A dilute atomic Fermi Up: Atomic Physics Previous: Atomic-Molecular Condensates with Large   Contents
Martin Savage 2003-08-06