Phase separation in a polarized Fermi gas with spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We study the phase separation of a spin polarized Fermi gas with spin-orbit coupling near a wide Feshbach resonance. As a result of the competition between spin-orbit coupling and population imbalance, the phase diagram for a uniform gas develops a rich structure of phase separation involving gapless superfluid states which are topologically non-trivial. We find that these novel gapless phases can be stabilized by intermediate spin-orbit coupling strengths. We then demonstrate the phase separation induced by an external trapping potential and discuss the optimal parameter region for the experimental observation of the gapless superfluid phases.

4.2 pages, 5 figures, replaced with the published version