Critical Behaviour in Trapped Strongly Interacting Fermi Gases

Abstract

We investigate the width of the Ginzburg critical region and experimental signatures of critical behavior in strongly interacting trapped Fermi gases close to unitarity, where the s-wave scattering length diverges. Despite the fact that the width of the critical region is of the order unity, evidence of critical behavior in the bulk thermodynamics of trapped gases is strongly suppressed by their inhomogeneity. The specific heat of a harmonically confined gas, for instance, is \textit{linear} in the reduced temperature $t = (T-T_{\mathrm{c}})/T_{\mathrm{c}}$ above $T_{\mathrm{c}}$. We also discuss the prospects of observing critical behavior in the local compressibility from measurements of the density profile.