Normal mass density of a superfluid Fermi gas at unitarity

Abstract

We calculate the normal mass density of a paired Fermi gas at unitarity. The dominant contribution near the superfluid transition is from fermionic quasiparticle excitations, and is thus sensitive to the pairing gap. A comparison with the recent experiment of Sidorenkov et al. suggests that the superfluid gap near the transition temperature is larger than the BCS value, but the data do not permit a quantitative inference of the gap. Calculations of the quenched moment of inertia of a BCS superfluid in a harmonic trap are in reasonable agreement with the earlier experiment of Riedl et al.