Topological superfluid phases of an atomic Fermi gas with in- and out-of-plane Zeeman fields and equal Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

We analyze the effects of in-and out-of-plane Zeeman fields on the BCS-Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) evolution of a Fermi gas with equal Rashba-Dresselhaus (ERD) spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We show that the ground state of the system involves gapless superfluid phases that can be distinguished with respect to the topology of the momentum-space regions with zero excitation energy. For the BCS-like uniform superfluid phases with zero center-of-mass momentum, the zeros may correspond to one or two doubly degenerate spheres, two or four spheres, two or four concave spheroids, or one or two doubly degenerate circles, depending on the combination of Zeeman fields and SOC. Such changes in the topology signal a quantum phase transition between distinct superfluid phases and leave their signatures on some thermodynamic quantities. We also analyze the possibility of Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO)-like nonuniform superfluid phases with finite center-of-mass momentum and obtain an even richer phase diagram.