Quantum solids, liquids, and gases program:Generation and dynamics of vortices in a superfluid unitary Fermi gas

by Prof. Aurel Bulgac (University of Washington)

Tuesday 27 Jul 2010, 13:45 → 13:45 Europe/Stockholm

The unitary Fermi gas has emerged as one of the most fascinating objects of study in the last decade with an wide impact on various physics sub-fields, from nuclear physics and astrophysics, AdS/CFT, to condensed matter physics. A unitary Fermi gas has remarkable properties, among them: the highest critical temperature known of a superfluid system (in appropriate units), the highest critical Landau velocity, a pseudogap phase and a FFLO phase. I will first describe briefly the nature and main properties of unitary gas. This will be followed by a description of an extension of the Density Functional Theory to superfluid systems, both in its static and time-dependent from, its validation and verification, and finally a number of simulations of vortex generation and dynamics in such systems, which reveal some unexpected features, among them the possibility of superflow with supercritical Landau velocity.