Topological px+ipy superfluid phase of fermionic polar molecules

Authors
Publication date 2011
Journal Physical Review A
Volume | Issue number 84 | 1
Number of pages 13
Organisations
  • Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI)
Abstract
We discuss the topological px+ipy superfluid phase in a 2D gas of single-component fermionic polar molecules dressed by a circularly polarized microwave field. This phase emerges because the molecules may interact with each other via a potential Vo(r) that has an attractive dipole-dipole 1/r^3 tail, which provides p-wave superfluid pairing at fairly high temperatures. We calculate the amplitude of elastic p-wave scattering in the potential Vo(r) taking into account both the anomalous scattering due to the dipole-dipole tail and the short-range contribution. This amplitude is then used for the analytical and numerical solution of the renormalized BCS gap equation which includes the second order Gor'kov-Melik-Barkhudarov corrections and the correction related to the effective mass of the quasiparticles. We find that the critical temperature Tc can be varied within a few orders of magnitude by modifying the short-range part of the potential Vo(r). The decay of the system via collisional relaxation of molecules to dressed states with lower energies is rather slow due to the necessity of a large momentum transfer. The presence of a constant transverse electric field reduces the inelastic rate, and the lifetime of the system can be of the order of seconds even at 2D densities ~10^9 cm^-2}. This leads to Tc of up to a few tens of nanokelvins and makes it realistic to obtain the topological px+ipy phase in experiments with ultracold polar molecules.
Document type Article
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.84.013603
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