Recent advances in rapidly quenched ultracold atomic Fermi gases near a Feshbach resonance have brought about a number of interesting problems in the context of observing the long-sought Stoner ferromagnetic phase transition. The possibility of experimentally obtaining a 'quasirepulsive' regime in the upper branch of the energy spectrum due to the rapid quench is currently being debated, and the Stoner transition has mainly been investigated theoretically by using perturbation theory or at high polarization due to the limited theoretical approaches in the strongly repulsive regime. In this work, we present a nonperturbative theoretical approach to the quasirepulsive upper branch of a Fermi gas near a broad Feshbach resonance, and we determine the finite-temperature phase diagram for the Stoner instability. Our results agree well with the known quantum Monte Carlo simulations at zero temperature, and we recover the known virial expansion prediction at high temperature for arbitrary interaction strengths. At resonance, we find that the Stoner transition temperature becomes of the order of the Fermi temperature, around which the molecule formation rate becomes vanishingly small. This suggests a feasible way to observe Stoner ferromagnetism in the nondegenerate temperature regime.
Funding
ARC | FT130100815
ARC | DP140103231
ARC | FT140100003
ARC | DP140100637
Spin-orbit coupled quantum gases: understanding new generation materials with topological order : Australian Research Council (ARC) | DP140103231
Imbalanced superfluidity with cold atoms: a new way to understand unconventional superconductors and stellar superfluids : Australian Research Council (ARC) | FT130100815
Strongly repulsive ultracold atomic gases as a resource for quantum simulation : Australian Research Council (ARC) | DP140100637
Finding the lost particle: Majorana fermions in ultracold atoms : Australian Research Council (ARC) | FT140100003