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Repulsive polarons and itinerant ferromagnetism in strongly polarized Fermi gases

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  • Degenerate Fermi gases
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Abstract

We analyze the properties of a single impurity immersed in a Fermi sea. At positive energy and scattering lengths, we show that the system possesses a well-defined but metastable excitation, the repulsive polaron, and we calculate its energy, quasiparticle residue and effective mass. From a thermodynamic argument we obtain the number of particles in the dressing cloud, illustrating the repulsive character of the polaron. Identifying the important 2- and 3-body decay channels, we furthermore calculate the lifetime of the repulsive polaron. The stability conditions for the formation of fully spin polarized (ferromagnetic) domains are then examined for a binary mixture of atoms with a general mass ratio. Our results indicate that mass imbalance lowers the critical interaction strength for phase-separation, but that very short quasiparticle decay times will complicate the experimental observation of itinerant ferromagnetism. Finally, we present the spectral function of the impurity for various coupling strengths and momenta.

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Massignan, P., Bruun, G.M. Repulsive polarons and itinerant ferromagnetism in strongly polarized Fermi gases. Eur. Phys. J. D 65, 83–89 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20084-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-20084-5

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