Reaching a Fermi-superfluid state near an orbital Feshbach resonance

We propose to realize a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid near a narrow Feshbach resonance using the recently discovered "orbital Feshbach resonance." The orbital Feshbach resonance is a type of magnetic field tunable scattering resonance theoretically predicted and experimentally observed recently in the alkaline-earth-metal-like ¹⁷³Yb atom. We first show that the orbital Feshbach resonance is a narrow resonance in energy, while it is hundreds Gauss wide in terms of magnetic field strength, taking the advantage that the magnetic moment difference between the open and closed channels is quite small. Therefore, this is an ideal platform for the experimental realization of a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid with narrow resonance. We further show that the transition temperature for the Fermi superfluid in this system, especially at the BCS side of the resonance, is even higher than that in a wide resonance, which is also due to the narrow character of this resonance. Our results will encourage experimental efforts to realize Fermi superfluid in the alikaline-earth-metal-like ¹⁷³Yb system, the properties of which will be complementary to extensively studied Fermi superfluids nearby a wide resonance in alkali-metal ⁴⁰K and ⁶Li systems.