Fermionic superfluids : from cold atoms to high density QCD : gapless (breached pair) superfluidity and kaon condensation

In this thesis, we explore aspects of fermionic superfluidity through a mean-field approximation. Our framework is extremely general, includes both pairing and Hartree-Fock contributions, and is derived rigorously from a variational principle. This framework allows us to analyze a wide range of fermionic systems. In this thesis, we shall consider two-species nonrelativistic atomic systems with various types of interactions, and relativistic QCD systems with 3 x 3 x 4 = 36 different quark degrees of freedom (3 colours, 3 flavours, and 4 relativistic degrees of freedom). We discuss properties of a new state of matter: gapless (Breached Pair) superfluidity, and include a summary of potential experimental realizations. We also present numerical results for a completely self-consistent approximation to the NJL model of high-density QCD and use these results to demonstrate a microscopic realization of kaon condensation. We describe how to match the mean-field approximation to the low-energy chiral effective theory of pseudo-Goldstone bosons, and we extract the numerical coefficients of the lowest order effective potential.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Forbes, Michael McNeil

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Frank Wilczek.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32299

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32299