Dynamic structure factors of a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid near an orbital Feshbach resonance across the phase transition from BCS to Sarma superfluid

Abstract

We theoretically investigate dynamic structure factors of a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid near an orbital Feshbach resonance with random phase approximation, and find their dynamical characters during the phase transition between a balanced conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid and a polarized Sarma superfluid by continuously varying the chemical potential difference of two spin components. In a BEC-like regime of the BCS superfluid, dynamic structure factors can do help to distinguish the in-phase ground state from the out-of-phase metastable state by the relative location of molecular excitation and Leggett mode, or the minimum energy to break a Cooper pair. In the phase transition between BCS and Sarma superfluid, we find the dynamic structure factor of Sarma superfluid has its own specific gapless excitation at a small transferred momentum which is mixed with the collective phonon excitation, and also a relatively strong atomic excitation at a large transferred momentum because of the existence of unpaired Fermi atoms, these signals can be used to differentiate Sarma superfluid from BCS superfluid.