Itinerant Ferromagnetism in Ultracold Fermi Gases

Itinerant ferromagnetism in cold Fermi gases with repulsive interactions is studied applying the Jastrow-Slater approximation generalized to finite polarization and temperature. For two components at zero temperature a second order transition is found at akF ≃ 0.90 compatible with QMC. Thermodynamic functions and observables such as the compressibility and spin susceptibility and the resulting fluctuations in number and spin are calculated.

For trapped gases the resulting cloud radii and kinetic energies are calculated and compared to recent experiments. Spin polarized systems are recommended for effective separation of large ferromagnetic domains. Collective modes are predicted and tri-critical points are calculated for multi-component systems.