Two-band description of resonant superfluidity in atomic Fermi gases

Abstract

Fermionic superfluidity in atomic Fermi gases across a Feshbach resonance is normally described by the atom-molecule theory, which treats the closed channel as a noninteracting point boson. In this work we present a theoretical description of the resonant superfluidity in analogy to the two-band superconductors. We employ the underlying two-channel scattering model of Feshbach resonance where the closed channel is treated as a composite boson with binding energy ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{0}$ and the resonance is triggered by the microscopic interchannel coupling ${U}_{12}$. The binding energy ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{0}$ naturally serves as an energy scale of the system, which has been sent to infinity in the atom-molecule theory. We show that the atom-molecule theory can be viewed as a leading-order low-energy effective theory of the underlying fermionic theory in the limit ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ and ${U}_{12}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, while keeping the phenomenological atom-molecule coupling finite. The resulting two-band description of the superfluid state is in analogy to the BCS theory of two-band superconductors. In the dilute limit ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{0}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$, the two-band description recovers precisely the atom-molecule theory. The two-band theory provides a natural approach to study the corrections because of a finite binding energy ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{0}$ in realistic experimental systems. For broad and moderate resonances, the correction is not important for current experimental densities. However, for extremely narrow resonance, we find that the correction becomes significant. The finite binding energy correction could be important for the stability of homogeneous polarized superfluid against phase separation in imbalanced Fermi gases across a narrow Feshbach resonance.