Mathematical and Numerical Studies on Ground States of Trapped Unitary Fermi Gases

Abstract. We mathematically and numerically study the ground states of unitary Fermi gases. Starting from the three-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation that contains a quantum pressure term and an angular momentum rotation term, we first nondimensionalize the equation and then obtain its one-dimensional and two-dimensional counterparts in some limit regimes of the external potentials. Existence and uniqueness of the ground states of the unitary Fermi gases are studied with/without the angular momentum rotation term. We present a regularized normalized gradient flow method to compute the ground states of trapped unitary Fermi gases. Our numerical results show that the quantum pressure term has a significant effect on the ground state properties. Specifically, with the presence of the quantum pressure term, the vortex lattices are very different from those obtained in conventional Bose–Einstein condensation.