Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 224, 533–538 (2015)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2015-02383-1

Regular Article

Phase separation of superfluids in the chain of four-component ultracold atoms

¹ Strongly Correlated Systems “Lendület” Research Group, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, HAS, 1525 Budapest, Hungary
² BME-MTA Exotic Quantum Phases “Lendület” Research Group, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Institute of Physics, 1111 Budapest, Hungary

^a e-mail: barcza.gergely@wigner.mta.hu
^b e-mail: eszirmai@phy.bme.hu

Received: 15 October 2014
Revised: 19 February 2015
Published online: 9 April 2015

Abstract

We investigate the competition of various exotic superfluid states in a chain of spin-polarized ultracold fermionic atoms with hyperfine spin F = 3/2 and s-wave contact interactions. We show that the ground state is an exotic inhomogeneous mixture in which two distinct superfluid phases – spin-carrying pairs and singlet quartets – form alternating domains in an extended region of the parameter space.