Pair correlations of an expanding superfluid Fermi gas

Abstract

The pair correlation function of an expanding gas is investigated with an emphasis on the BEC-BCS crossover of a superfluid Fermi gas at zero temperature. At unitarity quantum Monte Carlo simulations reveal the occurrence of a sizable bunching effect due to interactions in the spin up-down channel which, at short distances, is larger than that exhibited by thermal bosons in the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. We propose a local equilibrium ansatz for the pair correlation function which we predict will remain isotropic during the expansion even if the trapping potential is anisotropic, contrary to what happens for non-interacting gases. This behavior is understood to be a consequence of the violation of scaling of the pair correlation function due to interactions.