Eur. Phys. J. D 31, 493-497 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2004-00169-0

Instability of a trapped ultracold Fermi gas with attractive interactions: quantum effects

Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, École Normale Supérieure (Laboratoire associé au et aux Universités Paris 6 et Paris 7.) , 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

Corresponding author: ^a leyronas@lps.ens.fr

Received: 23 March 2004
Revised: 19 July 2004
Published online: 6 December 2004

Abstract

We consider the possible mechanical instability of an ultracold Fermi gas due to the attractive interactions between fermions of different species. We investigate how the instability, predicted by a mean field calculation, is modified when the gas is trapped in a harmonic potential and quantum effects are included.