Homogeneous Fermion Superfluid with Unequal Spin Populations

Abstract

For decades, the conventional view is that an s-wave BCS superfluid can not support uniform spin polarization due to a gap $\Delta$ in the quasiparticle excitation spectrum. We show that this is an artifact of the dismissal of quasiparticle interactions $V_{qp}^{}$ in the conventional approach at the outset. Such interactions can cause triplet fluctuations in the ground state and hence non-zero spin polarization at "magnetic field" $h<\Delta$. The resulting ground state is a pairing state of quasiparticles on the ``BCS vacuum". For sufficiently large $V_{qp}$, the spin polarization of at unitarity has the simple form $m\propto \mu^{1/2}$. Our study is motivated by the recent experiments at Rice which found evidence of a homogenous superfluid state with uniform spin polarization.