Ab initio simulation of the universal properties of unitary Fermi gas in a harmonic trap

Abstract

Chang and Bertsch [Phys. Rev. A 76, 021603(R) (2007)] proposed a simple formula for the ground state energy of a unitary Fermi gas in a harmonic trap, based on their Green's function Monte Carlo simulations of up to 22 fermions, combined with general assumptions about the universal thermodynamic behavior of the unitary Fermi gas. In this work, we perform the ab initio simulations of the ground state energy of up to one hundred fermions using the fictitious identical particle method to overcome the Fermion sign problem, and we find that the formula proposed by Chang and Bertsch remains highly accurate. Since the number of fermions we simulate is much larger than that simulated by Chang and Bertsch when they proposed the formula, our work provides strong evidence for the universal validity of the formula. Our work demonstrates that fictitious identical particles provide a valuable tool for the ab initio simulations of ultracold Fermi gases.