Flat band effects on the ground-state BCS-BEC crossover in atomic Fermi gases in a quasi-two-dimensional Lieb lattice

Abstract: The ground-state superfluid behavior of ultracold atomic Fermi gases with a short-range attractive interaction in a quasi-two-dimensional Lieb lattice is studied using BCS mean-field theory, within the context of BCS-BEC crossover. We find that the flat band leads to nontrivial exotic effects. As the Fermi level enters the flat band, both the pairing gap and the in-plane superfluid density exhibit an unusual power law as a function of interaction, with strongly enhanced quantum geometric effects, in addition to a dramatic increase of compressibility as the interaction approaches the BCS limit. As the Fermi level crosses the van Hove singularities, the character of pairing changes from particle-like to hole-like or vice versa. We present the computed phase diagram, in which a pair density wave state emerges at high densities with relatively strong interaction strength.