Quantum criticality and universal scaling of strongly attractive spin-imbalanced Fermi gases in a 1D harmonic trap (1101.2494v2)

Abstract: We investigate thermodynamics and quantum criticality of strongly attractive Fermi gases confined in a one-dimensional (1D) harmonic trap. Finite temperature density profiles, entropy, compressibility and susceptibility of the trapped gas are studied using analytic results for the thermodynamics within the local density approximation. We demonstrate that current experiments are capable of measuring universal Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid physics and quantum criticality of 1D strongly interacting Fermi gases. The results provide insights on recent measurements of key features of the phase diagram of a spin-imbalanced atomic Fermi gas [Liao et al., Nature 467, 567 (2010)] and point to further study of quantum critical phenomena in ultracold atomic Fermi gases.