2008/12/31 by Aurel Bulgac, Sukjin Yoon · 59 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Electron #Excited state #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Fermi gas #Oscillation (cell signaling) #Pairing #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum oscillations #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Quasiparticle #Superconductivity #Superfluidity #Unitary state #cond-mat.stat-mech #cond-mat.supr-con #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.085302
published in Physical Review Letters 102(8), 085302 (American Physical Society) · 4 pages, 3 figures, published version, updated figures and a number of changes
arxiv created 2009/02/25 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A unitary Fermi gas has a surprisingly rich spectrum of large amplitude modes of the pairing field alone, which defies a description within a formalism involving only a reduced set of degrees of freedom, such as quantum hydrodynamics or a Landau-Ginzburg-like description. These modes are very slow, with oscillation frequencies well below the pairing gap, which makes their damping through quasiparticle excitations quite ineffective. In atomic traps these modes couple naturally with the density oscillations, and the corresponding oscillations of the atomic cloud are an example of a new type of collective mode in superfluid Fermi systems. They have lower frequencies than the compressional collective hydrodynamic oscillations, have a nonspherical momentum distribution, and could be excited by a quick time variation of the scattering length.