# Trapped 6Li : A high Tc superfluid ?

## Abstract

We consider the effect of the indirect interaction due to the exchange of density fluctuations on the critical temperature of superfluid <sup>6</sup>Li . We obtain the strong coupling equation giving this critical temperature. This equation is solved approximately by retaining the same set of diagrams as in the paramagnon model. We show that, near the instability threshold, the attractive interaction due to density fluctuations gives rise to a strong increase in the critical temperature, providing a clear signature of the existence of fluctuation induced interactions.

The recent quite impressive progress in obtaining ultracold atomic gases has open the way to the discovery of a large number of new superfluids. Already most alkali Bose gases have been shown to undergo Bose Einstein condensation. Even if superfluidity has not been yet demonstrated explicitely in experiments, they are firmly believed to be superfluids because they have already been seen to display phase coherence. Moreover the search for the transition of trapped Fermi gases toward a BCS type superfluid is now actively considered , as the possibility of experimental observation is quite realistic.

A high critical temperature will be obtained for a strong attractive effective interaction between fermions. Since at low temperature scattering is essentially s-wave, a large negative scattering length is most favorable. Therefore spin polarized <sup>6</sup>Li appears as a strong candidate since its scattering length is found experimentally to be very large  $`a`$ = - 1140 $`\AA `$ . In this case pairing would occur between two different hyperfine states , which play the same role as spin states in standard BCS theory. This is the situation we will consider and we will assume the most favorable case where the number of atoms is the same in the two hyperfine states. It is naturally important to assess as well as possible the value of the critical temperature. Experiments are presently performed in magnetic atomic traps leading to a harmonic potential and calculations should be done for this geometry . Or one can also consider making use of an optical trap. Here we will restrict ourselves to the simpler situation of fermions confined in a box with total density $`n=k_F^3/3\pi ^2`$.

The high density regime is of particular interest since it corresponds clearly to higher critical temperature and the superfluid will be more accessible experimentally in this regime. However there is also a deep theoretical interest to investigate this domain. Indeed the high density regime is bounded by an instability which occurs for a coupling constant $`\lambda =2k_F|a|/\pi 1`$ . Beyond this limit the compressibility becomes negative because of the strong effective attraction between atoms in different hyperfine states. In the vicinity of this instability $`\lambda 1`$, the compressibility becomes high and density fluctuations occur easily. This leads to the possibility of an attractive interaction between fermions through the exchange of density fluctuations, in a way completely analogous to the phonon exchange mechanism of standard superconductivity. Qualitatively we expect this mechanism to add up to the direct attractive interaction and to lead to an increase in the critical temperature.

Independently of this increase, this situation is extremely interesting because it is quite analogous to what is believed to happen in many other condensed matter systems. High $`T_c`$ superconductors and the newly discovered low temperature superconductor $`Sr_2RuO_4`$ are well-known examples. However the best case is probably liquid <sup>3</sup>He  which is not so far from having a ferromagnetic instability. It has been proposed that strong spin fluctuations, the so-called paramagnons, exist in this liquid  and play an important role in the physics. In particular the attractive interaction, leading to the Cooper pairs formed in the superfluid, has been attributed to paramagnon exchange. A strong qualitative support for this picture is the existence of the A phase of superfluid <sup>3</sup>He at high pressure, which has been explained  by feedback effects of its specific structure on the paramagnon propagator. However it is not clear at all that the paramagnon model can provide a quantitative description of the properties of the liquid, and in particular can account for the observed values of the critical temperature .

In this respect the situation in <sup>3</sup>He is difficult, since one does not have a precise knowledge of the instantaneous part of the pairing interaction. Moreover the parameter $`\overline{I}`$ involved in the paramagnon description varies in a quite restricted range in the vicinity of the instability limit $`\overline{I}`$ = 1, when the pressure of the liquid is varied over the full range available in the phase diagram. By contrast the situation potentially offered by superfluid <sup>6</sup>Li gas is much more agreable : the instantaneous interaction can be directly linked to the diffusion length, which is fairly precisely known. Moreover the possibility of varying to a large extent the density allows to change the coupling constant at will. This offers a stringent coherence check of the theory since experiment will be able to verify the general qualitative behaviour of the model. In this way we can hope to have a definite answer to the question : is the paramagnon model a proper description or not ?

The problem of the critical temperature for a BCS superfluid in a dilute Fermi gas has been investigated by Gorkov and Melik-Barkhudarov , following the work  of Galitskii. It has been recently considered in the more general context of dilute atomic gases  by Stoof et al. who found a typical value of 40 nK for a density $`n=10^{12}cm^3`$. This temperature is quite within reach experimentally. Our purpose is to extend these works in the high density regime. Naturally our result will reduce to the proper one in the dilute limit.

The critical temperature is obtained  by writing that the vertex part in the normal state diverges, which is expected to occur first for zero total momentum and energy of the pair. The corresponding vertex part $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}`$ is related to the irreducible vertex $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{p,p^{}}`$ in the particle-particle channel by :

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}=\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{p,p^{}}T{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{p,k}D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_{k,p^{}}`$ (1)   
where $`_k`$ is for $`(2\pi )^3_n𝑑𝐤`$. We have set $`D_k=G(k)G(k)`$ where $`G(k)`$ is the full Green’s function and $`k=(𝐤,\omega _n)`$ is a four-momentum. The summation runs over the wavector $`𝐤`$ and the Matsubara frequency $`\omega _n`$ = $`(2n+1)\pi T`$.

We split the irreducible vertex into the bare interaction $`U_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}`$ and all the contributions $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}^{}`$ which are higher order in the interaction : $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{p,p^{}}`$ = $`U_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}`$ \+ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}^{}`$ . Then, following Galitskii , we eliminate the interaction U in favor of the vertex in the dilute limit corresponding physically to two atoms scattering in vacuum. In this limit, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ reduces to U, and $`G(k)`$ becomes the free particule Green’s function $`(i\omega _nϵ_k)^1`$ with $`ϵ_k=k^2/2m`$. In contrast to Ref.  , we have taken for convenience the chemical potential equal to zero in this limit. Let us call $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^T`$ the vertex in this limit. From Eq.(1) it satisfies :

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^T=U_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}{\displaystyle \frac{T}{(2\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐤U_{𝐩,𝐤}\underset{n}{}D_k^0\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐤,𝐩^{}}^T}`$ (2)   
where $`D_k^0=(\omega _n^2+ϵ_k^2)^1`$. Since we will deal with fairly small temperature, we can take the T $`0`$ limit where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^T`$ reduces to the vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^0`$ for two scattering atoms evaluated at zero energy. This vertex can be explicitely expressed  in terms of the scattering amplitude $`f(𝐩,𝐩^{})`$ corresponding to the scattering potential U. Since the atomic potential has a very short range compared to all other lengths involved in the problem, the typical wavevector for a change in $`U(𝐩,𝐩^{})`$ is very large compared to the wavevectors we have to deal with and similarly for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^0`$. Hence we can take in our problem $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩,𝐩^{}}^0`$ equal to its $`𝐩=𝐩^{}=\mathrm{𝟎}`$ limit, which is given  by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^0=4\pi a/m`$ in terms of the scattering length. This can be checked explicitely in the case of a separable potential or for a pseudopotential .

Since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}`$ diverges at $`T_c`$, the first term in the r.h.s. of Eq.(1) is negligible. In the resulting integral equation, $`p^{}`$ appears as a free parameter which can be omitted. Writing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p`$ instead of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,p^{}}`$, we obtain that $`T=T_c`$ when:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p=T{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}[U_{𝐩,𝐤}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}]D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ (3)   
is satisfied. Note that the effective interaction $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}`$ will be frequency dependent. Therefore we have also to retain the frequency dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$. In other words the order parameter in the superfluid phase will have a frequency dependence, which corresponds to a strong coupling situation. We eliminate $`U`$ from Eq.(3) by premultiplying it by $`\delta _{p^{},p}T\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐩^{},𝐩}^0D_p^0`$ and summing over $`p`$. Making use of Eq.(2) this leads to:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p=\mathrm{\Gamma }^0T{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}[D_kD_k^0]\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ (4)   
$`T{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}[\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^0T{\displaystyle \underset{k^{}}{}}D_k^{}^0\mathrm{\Gamma }_{k^{},k}^{}]D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ (5)   
Since we expect the dependence $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p`$ to be fairly slow, over a typical scale $`k_F`$, with respect to the wavevector p, we will neglect it in the following. For coherence $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}`$ in the r.h.s. of Eq.(4) will be evaluated for $`|𝐩|=k_F`$. Similarly we can evaluate the self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(k)`$ at the Fermi surface. In terms of the renormalization function $`Z_n`$ defined by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(k_F,i\omega _n)\mathrm{\Sigma }(k_F,0)=i\omega _n(1Z_n)`$ this leads to $`D_k=(\omega _n^2Z_n^2+\xi _k^2)^1`$ with $`\xi _k=ϵ_kE_F`$. This procedure is the standard one for classical superconductors, fully justified by the existence of a small energy scale which is the phonon energy. Here to the contrary we have the single energy scale $`E_F`$, and the quality of this set of approximations is less obvious. Nevertheless, since one does not expect any drastic effect to arise from this k dependence and that this procedure is consistent with the paramagnons approach, we will work with this approximate scheme.

Once $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p`$ has no p dependence, integrations over momentum can be performed in Eq.(4). In the first term, we write $`D_kD_k^0=[D_kD_k^1]+[D_k^1D_k^0]`$ where $`D_k^1=(\omega _n^2+\xi _k^2)^1`$. The contribution from $`D_k^1D_k^0`$ can be integrated exactly. For $`D_kD_k^1`$ we take into account, consistently with our above approximation, that $`\omega _n`$ is small. In this way we obtain :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐤[D_kD_k^0]}={\displaystyle \frac{\pi N_f}{|\omega _n|}}[C_n^WC_n^M]`$ (6)   
where $`N_f=mk_F/2\pi ^2`$ is the density of states at the Fermi surface. We have set $`C_n^M=1Z_n^1`$ and $`C_n^W=[\sqrt{1+(1+w_n^2)^{1/2}}\sqrt{|w_n|}]/\sqrt{2}`$ with $`w_n=\omega _n/E_F`$. One can check that the term $`C_n^W`$ gives in Eq.(4) a contribution $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^0N_f\mathrm{ln}(8e^{C2}E_F/\pi T)`$ (C is the Euler constant). If only this term is retained one obtains $`T_c/E_F=8e^{C2}/\pi \mathrm{exp}(1/\lambda )`$ used in . The $`C_n^M`$ term will give a decrease of the critical temperature due to mass renormalization and lifetime effects.

We turn now to the irreducible vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{k,k^{}}^{}`$. As we have indicated we are mostly interested in the contribution of density fluctuations to this vertex, and here we will handle it by retaining the same set of diagrams as in paramagnon theory. Actually since the attractive interaction acts only between atoms with different hyperfine states, we are exactly in the same situation as for paramagnons where interaction takes place only between different spins. The only qualitative difference is that the interaction is repulsive in paramagnon theory, leading to a positive dimensionless coupling constant $`\overline{I}=N_fI`$, while the attractive interaction between <sup>6</sup>Li correspond to a negative $`\overline{I}`$. Another important difference is that it would be inaccurate to retain only the bare interaction for all the elementary vertices in the paramagnon diagrams. Indeed we know that we have a large scattering length. This is obtained quantitatively by summing up the ladder diagrams for two scattering atoms, as it is clear from Eq.(2). Obviously we have to do a similar summation in the paramagnon diagrams, otherwise we will miss the dominant contribution. More precisely we would need to know the irreducible vertex in the particle-hole channel. We will assume that the dominant contribution to this vertex is given by the sum of the ladder diagrams. Also we will not attempt to take into account its energy dependence and consider that this vertex is the same as for two atoms in vacuum. With these hypotheses we are led to take the interaction $`I`$ of paramagnon theory equal to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^0`$. This gives us $`\overline{I}=N_f\mathrm{\Gamma }^0=\lambda `$.

Now the sum of the paramagnons diagrams ( including ladder and bubble diagrams ) gives  $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{k,k^{}}^{}=N_fV_{\mathrm{eff}}(kk^{})`$ with $`N_fV_{\mathrm{eff}}(k)=\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0/(1\overline{I}\overline{\chi }_0)+\overline{I}^3\overline{\chi }_0^2/(1\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0^2)`$ and $`\overline{\chi }_0(k)`$ is the dimensionless elementary bubble  . When the self-energy is evaluated with the corresponding set of diagrams, one finds  that it is given by the same expression as for an effective interaction $`N_fV_Z(k)=\overline{I}^3\overline{\chi }_0^2/(1\overline{I}\overline{\chi }_0)+\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0/(1\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0^2)`$ In agreement with our above approximation, we evaluate the self- energy for wavevector $`k_F`$ and for small energies. This leads to:

$`(2n+1)(Z_n1)=\overline{V}_Z(0)+2{\displaystyle \underset{p=1}{\overset{n}{}}}\overline{V}_Z(2\pi pT)`$ (7)   
with $`\overline{V}_Z(\omega _p)=(1/2k_F^2)_0^2q𝑑qN_fV_Z(q,\omega _p)`$. This $`\overline{V}_Z(\omega _p)`$ corresponds to the average of the interaction for scattering of an atom at the Fermi surface from $`𝐤`$ to $`𝐤^{}`$ with wavevector transfer $`q=2k_F\mathrm{sin}(\theta /2)`$ where $`\theta `$ is the angle between $`𝐤`$ and $`𝐤^{}`$. This angular average has to be performed numerically, in order to obtain $`\overline{V}_Z`$ . As expected $`Z_n>1`$. The maximum is at zero energy, with a fairly long tail at high energy. Naturally $`Z_n`$ increases when $`|\overline{I}|1`$ and it diverges at zero energy in this limit.

In the term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ in Eq.(4), the only strong dependence on k, for low energies, comes from $`D_k`$ which forces $`kk_F`$. So we integrate over $`\xi _k`$ as above. Setting $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n=\mathrm{\Gamma }(\omega _n)`$, this leads us to:

$`T{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{p,k}^{}D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_k={\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi T\mathrm{\Gamma }_m}{|\omega _m|Z_m}}\overline{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(\omega _n\omega _m)`$ (8)   
where as above $`\overline{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(\omega _p)=(1/2k_F^2)_0^2q𝑑qN_fV_{\mathrm{eff}}(q,\omega _p)`$. Finally the contribution from the last term in Eq.(4) with the double summation is somewhat more complicated to evaluate. Nevertheless after a double integration, performed numerically without problems, which provides a function $`V_c(\omega _n)`$, it can be written as:

$`T^2{\displaystyle \underset{k,k^{}}{}}D_k^{}^0\mathrm{\Gamma }_{k^{},k}^{}D_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_k=N_f{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi T\mathrm{\Gamma }_m}{|\omega _m|Z_m}}V_c(\omega _m)`$ (9)   
Finally Eq.(4) can be cast as:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_n={\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi T}{|\omega _m|}}\lambda C_m\mathrm{\Gamma }_m+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi T}{|\omega _m|Z_m}}\overline{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(\omega _n\omega _m)\mathrm{\Gamma }_m`$ (10)   
where we have set $`C_n=C_n^WC_n^MC_n^V`$ with $`C_n^V=V_c(\omega _n)/Z_n`$. Hence $`T_c`$ is the highest temperature for which the matrix corresponding to the r.h.s. of Eq.(9) has an eigenvalue equal to 1. Eq.(9) is very similar to the one obtained from Eliashberg equations for a strongly coupled superconductor. The most noticeable difference is the term $`C_n^V`$ produced by the interaction through fluctuation exchange when one replaces the bare potential in terms of the scattering length. We note also that, in the dilute limit, we recover the result of Gorkov and Melik-Barkhudarov .

Let us now consider the physical effect of $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. It is more convenient to decompose it  as $`N_fV_{\mathrm{eff}}=(3/2)\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0/(1\overline{I}\overline{\chi }_0)(1/2)\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0/(1+\overline{I}\overline{\chi }_0)`$. The first term is due to spin fluctuations and the second one to density fluctuations. As pointed out by Berk and Schrieffer  the first term gives always a repulsion which increases strongly in the vicinity of the ferromagnetic instability $`\overline{I}1`$. However in the range $`\overline{I}<0`$ which is of interest to us, the density fluctuations attraction can take over the spin fluctuations repulsion. This is what happens in the limit $`\overline{I}1`$ where the gas becomes unstable. Then in complete analogy with the paramagnon case, the effective interaction at the Fermi surface $`\overline{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}(\omega _n)`$ diverges for zero frequency. For nonzero frequency it remains finite. In particular at high energy where $`\overline{\chi }_0`$ gets small, spin fluctuations dominate, $`N_fV_{\mathrm{eff}}\overline{I}^2\overline{\chi }_0`$ and the overall interaction is repulsive. So for $`\overline{I}`$ near -1, the effective interaction is attractive at low frequency and has a repulsive high energy tail. But the attractive part exists only for $`\overline{I}0.6`$. For lower $`\overline{I}`$ fluctuations are repulsive for all energies.

The divergence of $`\overline{V}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ for $`\overline{I}1`$ may raise hope that in this limit $`T_c`$ is going to be very large. However it is known, in the case of strongly coupled superconductor as well as for  <sup>3</sup>He in paramagnon theory, that this increase is countered by the corresponding increase of $`Z_n`$, physically due to mass renormalization and lifetime effects. The net result of these opposite effects has to be found numerically, so we turn to our numerical results from Eq.(9) for $`T_c`$. They are given in Fig.1.

Surprisingly, instead of a regular rise of $`T_c/E_F`$ as a function of $`\lambda =\overline{I}`$, we find two regimes. Up to $`\lambda 0.4`$ we have a regular and strong increase (note that for $`\lambda =0.4`$ our result is markedly below the extrapolation of the result of Ref. , which would give $`T_c/E_F`$ = 0.023). We have then a saturation and even a slight decrease up to $`\lambda 0.6`$. We attribute this effect to the increase of $`Z_n`$ which overcompensates the increase with $`\lambda `$ of the direct attractive interaction. Then, starting for $`\lambda 0.6`$ we obtain another strong rise of $`T_c/E_F`$. This second regime is clearly due to the increasing contribution of the attractive interaction due density fluctuations. $`T_c/E_F`$ grows up to a maximum 0.025 found for $`\lambda 0.98`$ (corresponding to $`T_c`$ = 190 nK). We stress that, if observed, this critical temperature would be the highest (relative to $`E_F`$) among BCS superfluids, since for standard superconductors as well as superfluid <sup>3</sup>He this ratio is of order 10<sup>-3</sup> whereas for high $`T_c`$ superconductors (if they are BCS) it reaches at best 10<sup>-2</sup> . Then, when $`\lambda `$ increases further, $`T_c`$ decreases gently in the vicinity of $`\lambda =1`$. This effect is clearly due to the increase of $`Z_n`$ . However the maximum of $`T_c`$ is obtained for $`\lambda `$ so close to 1 that this decrease is probably unobservable experimentally.

The most interesting feature of these results is that the existence of an indirect attractive interaction due to density fluctuations exchange gives a qualitative signature in $`T_c(\lambda )`$. Although we may wonder about the quantitative validity of our results, due to the approximations we have made, it is reasonable to believe that the qualitative rise in $`T_c(\lambda )`$ will survive. Its observation would be a strong indication of the importance of fluctuation exchange in the effective interaction in <sup>6</sup>Li. And indirectly it would also bring some support to the existence of similar mechanisms in other BCS superfluids. Finally in this regime we expect, in the superfluid phase, deviations from standard weak coupling BCS theory and feedback effects. In conclusion we have shown that, for <sup>6</sup>Li near the instability threshold, indirect attractive interaction due to density fluctuations exchange can lead to rather high critical temperature, with a clear signature for its dependence as a function of the coupling constant. The observation of this effect would be very interesting, as a clear example of collective mode induced superfluidity.

We are very grateful to Y. Castin, C. Cohen-Tannoudji, J. Dalibard, W. Krauth, M.O. Mewes and C. Salomon for very stimulating discussions.

* Laboratoire associé au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et aux Universités Paris 6 et Paris 7.