Three-dimensional spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases: Fulde-Ferrell pairing, Majorana fermions, Weyl fermions, and gapless topological superfluidity

We theoretically investigate a three-dimensional Fermi gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling in the presence of both out-of-plane and in-plane Zeeman fields. We show that, driven by a sufficiently large Zeeman field, either out-of-plane or in-plane, the superfluid phase of this system exhibits a number of interesting features, including inhomogeneous Fulde-Ferrell pairing, gapped or gapless topological order, and exotic quasi-particle excitations known as Weyl fermions that have linear energy dispersions in momentum space (i.e., massless Dirac fermions). The topological superfluid phase can have either four or two topologically protected Weyl nodes. We present the phase diagrams at both zero and finite temperatures and discuss the possibility of their observation in an atomic Fermi gas with synthetic spin-orbit coupling. In this context, topological superfluid phase with an imperfect Rashba spin-orbit coupling is also studied.

Project supported by the ARC Discovery Projects (Grant Nos. FT140100003, FT130100815, DP140103231, and DP140100637), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2011CB921502), the US National Science Foundation, and the Welch Foundation (Grant No. C-1669).