Flow field of a unitary Fermi gas for the scissors mode

Abstract

The scissors mode plays a crucial role in the study of the unitary Fermi gas. In this paper, we simulate the scissors mode by solving the hydrodynamic equations with appropriate initial conditions, and then extract the flow field of the gas. The flow fields in different regimes are found to be essentially different. The characteristic differences in the flow patterns between the superfluid and the normal viscous fluid are presented. Irrotational flow signals superfluidity, while rotational one indicates normal hydrodynamical behavior. These different characteristics can be visualized by the velocity portraits of the flow, which provide an intuitive way to discriminate the states of the Fermi gas.