Single impurity in ultracold Fermi superfluids

The role of impurities as experimental probes in the detection of quantum material properties is well appreciated. Here we study the effect of a single classical magnetic impurity in trapped ultracold Fermi superfluids. Depending on its shape and strength, a magnetic impurity can induce single or multiple midgap bound states in a superfluid Fermi gas. The multiple midgap states could coincide with the development of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase within the superfluid. As an analog of the scanning tunneling microsope, we propose a modified rf spectroscopic method to measure the local density of states which can be employed to detect these states and other quantum phases of cold atoms. A key result of our self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes calculations is that amagnetic impurity can controllably induce an FFLO state at currently accessible experimental parameters.