Super-shell structures and pairing in ultracold trapped Fermi gases

Abstract

We calculate level densities and pairing gaps for an ultracold dilute gas of fermionic atoms in harmonic traps under the influence of mean field and anharmonic quartic trap potentials. Super-shell structures, which were found in Hartree-Fock calculations, are calculated analytically within periodic orbit theory as well as from WKB calculations. For attractive interactions, the underlying level densities are crucial for pairing and super-shell structures in gaps are predicted.