Unitary Fermi gas, ε equation and conformal field theories

Abstract

We review theoretical aspects of unitary Fermi gas (UFG), which has been realized in ultracold atom experiments. We first introduce the ε expansion technique based on a systematic expansion in terms of the dimensionality of space. We apply this technique to compute the thermodynamic quantities, the quasiparticle cum, and the criticl temperature of UFG. We then discuss consequences of the scale and conformal invariance of UFG. We prove a correspondence between primary operators in nonrelativistic conformal field theories and energy eigenstates in a harmonic potential. We use this correspondence to compute energies of fermions at unitarity in a harmonic potential. The scale and conformal invariance together with the general coordinate invariance constrains the properties of UFG. We show the vanishing bulk viscosities of UFG and derive the low-energy effective Lagrangian for the superfluid UFG. Finally we propose other systems exhibiting the nonrelativistic scaling and conformal symmetries that can be in principle realized in ultracold atom experiments. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.