Super-Tonks-Girardeau gas of spin-1/2 interacting fermions

Abstract

Fermi gases confined in tight one-dimensional waveguides form two-particle bound states of atoms in the presence of a strongly attractive interaction. Based on the exact solution of the one-dimensional spin-1/2 interacting Fermi gas, we demonstrate that a stable excited state with no pairing between attractive fermionic atoms can be realized by a sudden switch of interaction from strongly repulsive regime to the strongly attractive regime. Such a state is an exact fermionic analog of the experimentally observed super-Tonks-Girardeau state of bosonic Cesium atoms [Science 325, 1224 (2009)] and should be possible to be observed by the experiment. The frequency of lowest breathing mode of the fermionic super-Tonks-Girardeau gas is calculated as a function of the interaction strength, which could be used as a detectable signature for the experimental observation.

4.1 pages, 5 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett