Cooper pairing and BCS-BEC evolution in mixed-dimensional Fermi gases

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.82.063628

Similar to what has recently been achieved with Bose-Bose mixtures [G. Lamporesi, J. Catani, G. Barontini, Y. Nishida, M. Inguscio, and F. Minardi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 153202 (2010)], mixed-dimensional Fermi-Fermi mixtures can be created by applying a species-selective one-dimensional optical lattice to a two-species Fermi gas (sigma equivalent to {up arrow,down arrow}), in such a way that both species are confined to quasi-two-dimensional geometries determined by their hoppings along the lattice direction. We investigated the ground-state phase diagram of superfluidity for such mixtures in the BCS-BEC evolution, and found normal, gapped superfluid, gapless superfluid, and phase separated regions. In particular, we found a stable gapless superfluid phase where the unpaired up arrow and down arrow fermions coexist with the paired (or superfluid) ones in different momentum space regions. This phase is in some ways similar to the Sarma state found in mixtures with densities, but in our case, the gapless superfluid phase is unpolarized and most importantly it is stable against phase separation.