Fulde-Ferrell states in unequally charged Fermi gases

Abstract

Atoms with different internal states can exhibit different responses to an artificial magnetic field. An atomic gas mixture of two different components can therefore be interpreted as a mixture of two atomic gases carrying different synthetic charges. We consider the superfluid state of such unequally charged Fermi gases coupled to a magnetic field via the orbital effect and trapped in a torus geometry. The orbital coupling to the magnetic field favors an inhomogeneous superfluid state with optimum finite-center-of-mass-momentum pairing. The resulting population-balanced orbital Fulde-Ferrell (FF) state is robust against the magnetic field and does not undergo pair breaking, unlike the conventional BCS and Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov-type pairing states under the Zeeman effect. We contrast the homogeneous and inhomogeneous cases, emphasizing the advantages of the unequally charged systems, and present their momentum distributions. We conclude that an unequally charged atomic Fermi gas system orbitally coupled to an artificial magnetic field provides an ideal candidate for experimental realization of the FF state.