Rotonlike Fulde-Ferrell Collective Excitations of an Imbalanced Fermi Gas in a Two-Dimensional Optical Lattice

Abstract

We address the question of whether superfluidity can survive in the case of fermion pairing between different species with mismatched Fermi surfaces using as an example a population-imbalanced mixture of 6Li atomic Fermi gas loaded in a two-dimensional optical lattice at nonzero temperatures. The collective mode is calculated from the Bethe-Salpeter equations in the general random phase approximation assuming a Fulde-Ferrell order parameter. The numerical solution shows that, in addition to low-energy (Goldstone) mode, two rotonlike minima exist, and therefore, the superfluidity can survive in this imbalanced system.