Stability of quantum degenerate Fermi gases of tilted polar molecules

Abstract

A recent experimental realization of a quantum degenerate gas of K40Rb87 molecules opens up prospects of exploring strong dipolar Fermi gases and many-body phenomena arising in that regime. Here, we derive a mean-field variational approach based on the Wigner function for the description of the ground-state properties of such systems. We show that the stability of dipolar fermions in a general harmonic trap is universal as it only depends on the trap aspect ratios and the dipoles' orientation. We calculate the species-independent stability diagram and the deformation of the Fermi surface (FS) for polarized molecules, whose electric dipoles are oriented along a preferential direction. Compared to atomic magnetic species, the stability of a molecular electric system turns out to strongly depend on its geometry and the FS deformation significantly increases.