Topological superfluid in a Fermi-Bose mixture with a high critical temperature

Abstract

We show that a two-dimensional (2D) spin-polarised Fermi gas immersed in a 3D Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) constitutes a very promising system to realise a $p_x+ip_y$ superfluid. The fermions attract each other via an induced interaction mediated by the bosons, and the resulting pairing is analysed with retardation effects fully taken into account. This is further combined with Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) theory to obtain reliable results for the superfluid critical temperature. We show that both the strength and the range of the induced interaction can be tuned experimentally, which can be used to make the critical temperature approach the maximum value allowed by general BKT theory. Moreover, this is achieved while keeping the Fermi-Bose interaction weak so that three-body losses are small. Our results show that realising a topological superfluid with atomic Fermi-Bose mixtures is within experimental reach.