Analytic normal mode frequencies for N identical particles: The microscopic dynamics underlying the emergence and stability of excitation gaps from BCS to unitarity

Abstract

The frequencies of the analytic normal modes for N identical particles are studied as a function of system parameters from the weakly interacting BCS regime to the strongly interacting unitary regime. The normal modes were obtained previously from a first-order L = 0 group theoretic solution of a three-dimensional Hamiltonian with a general two-body interaction for confined, identical particles. In a precursor to this study, the collective behavior of these normal modes was investigated as a function of N from few-body systems to many-body systems analyzing the contribution of individual particles to the collective macroscopic motions. A specific case, the Hamiltonian for Fermi gases in the unitary regime was studied in more detail. This regime is known to support collective behavior in the form of superfluidity and has previously been successfully described using normal modes. Two phenomena that could sustain the emergence and stability of superfluid behavior were revealed, including the behavior of the normal mode frequencies as N increases. In this paper, I focus on a more detailed analysis of these analytic frequencies, extending my investigation to include Hamiltonians with a range of interparticle interaction strengths from the BCS regime to the unitary regime and analyzing the microscopic dynamics that lead to large gaps at unitarity. The results of the current study suggest that in regimes where higher-order effects are small, normal modes can be used to describe the physics of superfluidity from the weakly interacting BCS regime with the emergence of small excitation gaps to unitarity with its large gaps, and can offer insight into a possible microscopic understanding of the behavior at unitarity. This approach could thus offer an alternative to the two-body pairing models commonly used to describe superfluidity along this transition.