Co-existence and shell structures of several superfluids in trapped three-component Fermi mixtures

Abstract

We study the properties of a trapped interacting three component Fermi gas. We assume that one of the components can have a different mass from the other two. We calculate the different phases of the three component mixture and find a rich variety of different phases corresponding to different pairing channels, and simple ways of tuning the system from one phase to another. In particular, we predict co-existence of several different superfluids in the trap, forming a shell structure, and phase transitions from this mixture of superfluids to a single superfluid when the system parameters or temperature is varied. Such shell structures realize superfluids with a non-trivial spatial topology and leave clear observable signatures in the density profile of the gas.